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Thursday, June 12, 2008

An Example of an e-commerce failure and its causes


Kozmo.com (1998-2001)
Kozmo.com was a short-lived online store and delivery service that promised fast, friendly and without delivery charge of anything from snacks to movies. The founder of this company are Joseph Park and Yong Kang, they started the business in March 1998 at New York City. The great idea in this company was that you could order anything at any time and have them delivered direct to your house within one hour with free of delivery charge.

Kozmo.com is one of the top 10 tech we miss which hailed by CNET.com. Kozmo.com had a business model that promised deliver small goods with free of charge, by using bicycle messengers. On the other hand, it entered a five co-marketing agreement with Starbucks in February 2000 in order to promote its services in their coffee shops by paying $150 million. However, Kozmo.com ended it services in March 2001 after paying out $15 million.

In July 2000, at the height of its business, the company expanded to seven cities. It was familiar with college student, young professionals, and the urbanites, but soon the company still went out of business. It is because later they found that it was cost too much to deliver a DVD and a pack of gum. Eventually a $10 minimum charge was introduced, but that did not stop it from closing in March 2001. Before the layoffs, Kozmo had filed an IPO with the SEC, but it never went public. Consistent with documents filed with the SEC , the company had revenue of $3.5 million in the year 1999, with a resulting net loss of $26.3 million.

As a summary, although Kozmo.com had a great idea to have an online business, but their business still come to failure with the reason of they did not had a proper business plan. Without a proper business plan, Kozmo was too late to learn that its primary attraction of free delivery was also its causes of defeat.

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