Fashionmall.com, a 6-year-old fashion portal based in New York, intends to keep the Boo brand alive and kicking, right down to its perky Miss Boo mascot. Fashionmall plans to make the announcement Monday. However, the Boo.com site leaked the news on Thursday afternoon. The sale was later confirmed by KPMG Corporate Recovery, the London-based liquidators handling the sale.
Visitors to the defunct sporting-goods retailing site saw Miss Boo, decked out in a green sleeveless top. A message atop the window stated: "Fashionmall.com is very proud to announce our acquisition of Boo.com. We will be working diligently over the next few weeks to position Boo as the ultimate global fashion portal - to deliver all the great things you loved about Boo."
Fashionmall CEO Ben Narasin said the company has acquired all domain names, Web design elements, trademarks and editorial concepts associated with Boo, including Miss Boo and the print magazine, Boom, which folded after its inaugural edition. He would not disclose what his company paid but said the price tag was higher than that paid in a previous Boo sell-off. On Tuesday, it was announced that London-based information-technology firm Bright Station had acquired Boo's back-end shipping technology for $375,000.
Former Boo employees and industry observers had speculated that the back-end technology was the most valuable asset that the ailing business could offer a prospective buyer. Narasin disagrees.
"For all the things Boo has done," says Narasin, "this company has made a staggering investment in the organization and promotion of a brand name. ... We believe this asset to be far more valuable then the back-end, and you can read into that what you will."
The Boo saga has attracted international attention since its highly publicized origin a year ago. The company, founded by former fashion models Ernst Malmsten and Kajsa Leander and backed by some of the biggest names in fashion, from Bernard Arnault to the Benetton family, reportedly amassed $135 million in funding in 1999. It quickly blew through its capital, lavishing money on a site whose launch came five months late and remained extremely buggy. The global attention it received was unprecedented in the Internet Economy and went a long way toward building up the Boo name with consumers. But the attention was not enough to overcome a pattern of go-for-broke spending, particularly in an aggressive prelaunch advertising push. The company was forced to close in mid-May, six months after launch. Liquidators were called in to find a buyer and pay off the company's $25 million debt load.
Ironically, when Boo went under, it still owed Fashionmall for an ad campaign it ran on the company's site this spring. Narasin was uncertain whether that debt could be worked into the final sale price.
The enticement for Narasin was the fact that Boo had already gone through the arduous process of registering its domain name and getting incorporated in multiple European countries. The company had been operating in 18 countries, including the U.S. and much of Europe.
Narasin said he has been looking for a business partner to facilitate Fashionmall's push into Europe and eventually across the globe. "We didn't believe the mall brand, the Fashionmall brand, played well outside of [the U.S.]," says Narasin.
Fashionmall has existed since 1994. It had a brief stint as an online store, operating Outletmall.com. But it recently ditched the e-commerce model in favor of the portal concept. It derives all of its revenues from advertising sales and transaction fees from sale leads generated off its site to member stores including EddieBauer.com and OldNavy.com. Last year, the company generated $4 million in revenue. Fashionmall went public in June 1999. In afternoon trading on Thursday, its stock was at $2.38, well below its 52-week high of $12.25.
Fashionmall and Bright Station might have gotten valuable pieces of Boo, but a long list of creditors will not get paid in full, confirmed Richard Whitehead, a spokesman
