Boo.com was launched in the Autumn of 1999 selling branded fashion apparel over the internet. The founders of Boo.com are three Swedish entrepreneurs who are Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander, and Pattrik Hedelin. The company famously went bust following the dotcom boom in the late 1990s. Boo.com’s failure was caused by did not plan the business carefully that may impact its overall success. Boo.com did not considered the 4 P’s which are Price, Product, Place and Promotion as well as the environmental factors which include social, technological, economic, political and geography when did the business plan.

In year 1998, the internet capability of low developed countries is worse than nowadays. Boo.com had established many online shops in many countries without considering the problem of internet capability in the low developed countries. During that time, many people are using dial up internet. Since Boo.com relied heavily on JavaScript and flash technology to display pseudo-3D views of wares as well as Miss Boo, a sales-assistant-style avatar. Since then, around 20% of home users who used dial-up internet cannot access Boo.com at a fast rate. Besides that, the webpage design and usability of Boo.com is poor and it is difficult for visitor to get where to go and link. Boo.com had a policy that limit the amount of transaction they made to three per twenty minute. It was discouraging the customers to shop and purchase at Boo.com again causes the Boo.com losing a lot of sales and income. The company also decided to pay postage on return items from customers that may cause its expenses increase and reduce the income as well. Moreover, it had spent $135 million of Venture capitalists' money in just 18 months. It did not manage its capital effectively causes the business failed.

Even though Boo.com was failed, but it is a good opportunity to many online companies learn from Boo.com mistakes and able to avoid it in the future. For example, Boo.com was re-launching as a one stop travel site “Ultimate Online Destination for Travel”.