Boo.com

Boo.com was a short-lived British e-commerce business, founded in 1998 by Swedes Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin, who were regarded as sophisticated Internet entrepreneurs in Europe by the investors because they had created an online bookstore named Bokus.com, the third largest book e-retailer (in 1997), before founding boo.com. The company had its headquarters along Carnaby Street in London and initially had 40 employees. In October 1999, it had eight offices and 400 employees in Amsterdam, Munich, New York City, Paris, and Stockholm. After several highly publicized delays, Boo.com launched in the autumn of 1999 selling branded fashion apparel on the Internet. The company spent $135 million of venture capital in just 18 months, and was placed into receivership on 18 May 2000 and liquidated. It relaunched in the autumn of 2000 with Kate Buggeln, an ex-Bloomingdale's salesperson and Internet consultant, as president. She told Women's Wear Daily that they were working to "expand beyond the portal business model into Boo products and Boo licensing." In June 2008, CNET hailed Boo.com as one of the greatest dot-com busts in history. Malmsten wrote about the experience in his book Boo Hoo: A dot.com Story from Concept to Catastrophe, published in 2001.