Kozmo.com closes down
Kozmo.com, one of the original silly dot-com ideas, has gone out of business. Here are the reports from Reuters, the NY Times, and Wired News. My own opinion follows… This whole dot-com thing has been driving me crazy, but I just can’t seem to work up any sympathy for Kozmo.com. They just seem to be one of those crazy dot-com businesses that never should have worked in the first place.
They hand-delivered all sorts of items to people all over cities, initially at no charge. The only thing that was supposed to make them special is that they did this through the Web instead of an 800 number.
How does the Web make it easier to deliver a bag of potato chips? All you save is the cost of the order-taking personnel, and that certainly doesn’t give you enough spare cash to perform your service for free.
I put Kozmo in the same category as etoys.com and pets.com: they did have actual products to sell to actual customers, unlike true vapor businesses like NBCi or Go.com. But what they didn’t realize is that the Web gives them zero advantage over “real-world” mail-order pet shops or delivery services. It just looks good to venture capitalists, and even that doesn’t last too long.
Of course, I say this with the benefit of hindsight. If Kozmo had been my idea, and someone had offered me a few million to help get it started, I would have jumped on it…