I’ve intentionally let the dust settle before posting my thoughts on Ferrit.
What amazes me the most about the whole thing is the loud noise coming from some corners of the New Zealand blogosphere who appear to be delighting in the web site’s failure.
The reasons Ferrit “failed” are obvious – probably even to Ferrit. And sure, if I were calling the shots I would have done things differently. Most people would have. But Telecom isn’t most people and a company that size was always going to go “all in” or not at all. And it’s worth pointing out that Ferrit isn’t the only site taking this approach. Will the same people be so hard on Xero if their dream ends the same way?
It takes a certain type of person/company to put their money where their mouth is and actually give something a go and it’s a lot easier to critisize other people’s mistakes than get out there and risk making your own.
If nothing else, Ferrit gave people something to talk/bitch about. But it also gave a number of small online retailers a real shot at e-commerce; a source of traffic and sales they otherwise may not have been able to afford.
“But it also gave a number of small online retailers a real shot at e-commerce”
I disagree. This is one place where they went wrong. They had 1500 retailers ready to sign up in the early days but they continued to focus on the big retailers who were not agile enough to get on the site. If they had focused on the smaller retailer and offered them a great way to sell to an aggregated audience (aka Amazon) then they may have had a better chance.
We are not specifically delighting in Ferrit’s downfall – It makes me sick that that much money was poured into a venture and they didn’t listen to peoples advice until it was far to late. We tried to help them in the early days but I just don’t think they wanted to listen.
Hey Glen – thanks for your comment.
Re: smaller retailers, I was really referring to the likes of elive, thenile, wine society, real groovy, iqtoys etc who probably made a significant investment getting on board with Ferrit and making a go of it. Some might say that if Ferrit went as deep as 1500 retailers than really they’d be entering Trade Me Stores/Zillion territory which would be an entirely different proposition in my mind.