Zapped by the Internet recession, Furniture.com zonked out for a long snooze
on a comfy sofa, but now the failed online retailer has reupholstered the
business plan and new ownership is planning a come-back with a relaunch set
for Wednesday.
The "Coming Soon" place-holder Web site says that
the new Furniture.com will be partnered with "some of the largest furniture
retailers in the country" for faster delivery and local service.
The previous business model for the Framingham, Mass.-based company was based
on the central warehouse concept. That plan was mostly online idealism
(shipping costs are high and not a lot of folks are willing to buy a mattress
or a sofa without sitting on it first) and the
company went belly-up in November of 2000, without ever completing its
IPO.
Furniture.com, which counted CMGI as a minority investor, lost $46.5 million
in 1999 on revenues of $10.9 million.
This time around the plan is to team up with established, real-world
furniture sellers like Levitz Home
Furnishings, the holding company for Levitz Furniture and Seaman
Furniture.
Clearly furniture is a tough business even in the real-world; Levitz
Furniture itself declared bankruptcy in 1997. Today Levitz Furniture has
about 60 stores (half of them in California), while Seaman also has about 60
stores in the northeastern U.S., according to Hoover's.
The revived company is being headed by a former Furniture.com senior vice
president, Carl Prindle, a spokesman told InternetNews.com. Customer orders
apparently will be transmitted to the established retailers, which will
handle delivery, and of course the associated problems of returns.
Of course, there's not much online that hasn't been tried and the new
Furniture.com will have competition from outfits like FurnitureFan.com, which says
it "helps you find the furniture you like, in stores near you." The company
evolved
from FurnitureChannel.com, a Sudbury, Mass-based outfit that started as
an online retailer and saw its business model evolve as the reality set in.
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