Dead Ferrit
The Line reports that Telecom has killed Ferrit:
Three years ago, Telecom threw its money into the online retail venture Ferrit, today, Telecom has decided to throw it out. …
Telecom retail CEO Alan Gourdie … in a press release, saying that the company is focused on mobile, broadband and ICT and that Ferrit falls outside the company’s core service focus.
I can’t say I am terribly surprised. It didn’t provide people with enough of an incentive to shop there, rather than elsewhere.
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Tags: Telecom
January 12th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
One of their early billboard adverts in East Tamaki said: “Make our Mums proud. Shop at our site.”
Sadly, that really was one of the better attempts they ever made to entice potential customers…
January 12th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
With the leverage they have, Telecom had a real opportunity to create a great shopping site. Sadly it was poorly built and had terrible marketing. They should stick to what they do best (once they figure out what that is).
January 12th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Where’s Lockwood Smith when you need dead things swallowed?
January 12th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
They are losing money “hand over fist” with Ferrit.
But in my opinion that is what happens when you change the strategic direction during the start-up process.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Never thought it would work especially as when first launched the order and pay aspect was cumbersome
January 12th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
It’s not freshly dead. It’s been pining for the fjords from the beginning.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Most startups can innovate, but can execute.
Most corporates can’t innovate, but can execute.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
David, your link is behind a paywall. The story has hit both Herald and Stuff now.
I had expected Ferrit to fold this year. The amount of money they spend on advertising, marketing and the number of people they have working for them is orders of magnitude higher than their business model provides them with. The way they were operating simply wasn’t sustainable without Telecom propping them up.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
That’s one ferrit DoC can’t claim!
January 12th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
yay – no more of those twattish ads with that doofus! hooray!
January 12th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
The real problem was that there were no real bargains, unique to the site, on the site. And the inventory was even more poorly managed than that at TradeMe, which is appalling. I guess the real deal is there was no vision. Lots of folks at the helm over the years, but none who could see their way around the iceberg.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
The real problem had nothing to do with the consumer – but with the supplier. They used only major brand retailers and the only thing that they could compete on was price. Why would you, as a supplier, want to compete just on price? Why would you spend money to support Ferrit when you were also spending money for your own presence.
Poor vision at the start. Should have focused on small, unique product suppliers – those who regularly use Trade Me as their electronic mass circulation channel to market. Telecom, however, only wanted to deal with other ‘big players’. As a result, they died – lasted much longer than I expected though. Telecom was right to enter into new ventures – such as Ferrit, such as the Cable TV – they just chose the wrong people to execute and direct – because they were Telecom people.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
That “doofus” was plain creepy…
January 12th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
poor old ferrit. it must have sounded good in a blue sky session with a room full of telecom lifers.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
WTF was up with that dorky nerd character anyway ? As the saying goes, “never irritate the mind you seek to persuade”. By painting their customers as irritating weirdo nerds with no life they are sending exactly the wrong message if they want to persuade the masses that shopping online isn’t for nerdy weirdos. Especially as most of the stuff on their site was ordinary consumer items. If you want to convince Joe Average that this is a good way to buy a toaster, they were going exactly the wrong way about it.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Exactly. Who’d want to be associated with that guy. I always wondered for what nefarious purposes he was using his appliances…. and which add agency came up with the character?
January 12th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Is it true that Telecom looked at buying Trademe a few years before Sam Morgan sold out – but considered it was too expensive???
January 13th, 2009 at 7:28 am
I can see it now…..
A darkened room, a plate glass boardroom table, flickering powerpointed bullet points, danish pastry smeared storyboards, and a dozen designer-eyewear-sporting corporate suits nodding sagely.
Telecom’s Feritt Marketing Strategy Team pumpin’ steam…..
January 13th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Flashman said : >> Telecom’s Feritt Marketing Strategy Team pumpin’ steam…..
They would have been pumpin’ sumthin’, not sure if it was steam.
2-3 years ago people I know who worked on that project said it was headin’ for the shitter.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Corporates playing sillybuggers with their fellow corporates, treating their customers as empty abstracts. Smug young thingummies writing phony product reviews. No doubt the hip ‘n happening recycled bureaucrats behind Ferrit saw themselves as cutting-edge entrepreneurial capitalists.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:35 am
was never going to work. they didnt want to be a discounting site like amazon…. they also didnt keep any stock.. just forwarded orders onto companies. what a joke. so if you bought 2 items from 2 different companies (at full retail) ya paid 2 lots of freight…
January 13th, 2009 at 8:49 am
yeah, a stupid idea poorly executed.
If it was for geeks (and they used a geek to advertise) it didnt offer anything that geeks can’t get elsewhere cheaper
if it was for mum and dad, well it needed some compelling angle. What was it, oh yes, dont see the product and buy it retail.
Its like some MBA looked at Amazon and trademe and said we could do that, but make it harder, offer no real bargains, and no reason for anyone to ever use the site. Now lets make it expensive to run and maintain too.
Right up there with Whitcoulls flying pig, remember that glorious success?
hmmm, yup a real winner
January 13th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Telco’s love to think they can branch out into on-line sales bacause of their ‘extensive’ retail experience. LOL.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:11 am
It was a crap idea, poorly executed and now we have Telecom suits telling the media it was because NZ people were not ready for internet retail.
If that dummy was typical of those running Ferrit no wonder it failed.
NZer’s use the internet for many retail experiences, but why buy from Ferrit, it had no unique Selling Proposition, nor was there any added value or convenience.
And Ferrit as a name, get real.
Anybody with experience of the real world would have told them it should never have gone ahead.
god knows what sort of business case was put together.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Stuff Reports “Ferrit was seen as pet project of former chief executive Theresa Gattung…” ’nuff said
January 13th, 2009 at 9:36 am
They overestimate the market which is those without a car or access to public transport but with a credit card.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I was put off by the ferrit tv ads that featured a wierd cardy wearing guy who seemed to be into bestiality.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:10 am
I blogged on this today. The really stunning thing was the incredible amount of money that has been poured into Ferrit since it was launched and the number of people behind the scenes.
The dot-com boom was still alive and well (until yesterday) over at Ferrit!
January 13th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Agreed Aardvark. How the hell can an online business that is purely a middle man (i.e. no actual stock themselves and they just pass on the order) need a staff of 37?? And you’ve got to sell a lot of stuff to recoup the amount of money they would have poured into marketing.
You can’t take a bricks and mortar business model and apply it to the net – I thought that was a pretty simple concept.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:38 am
I was left wondering how Telecom expected the site to draw customers and, you know, make money. Apparently the people running the show were still wondering the same thing.
Ferrit General Manager Ralph Brayham is using the currently trendy “Global Financial Crisis” excusology, claiming that the success of the site was dependent on a constant stream of new retailers signing up to expand the product range, and the current financial climate was scaring potential retailers off. A more cynical observer might say that their business model was fundamentally flawed, and that someone has finally realised this and pulled the plug.
Whatever Telecom’s motivations were, soon Ferrit will be just a ghost on the servers of the interwebs, but there’s one thing we can all be glad about; we don’t have to put up with those god-awful TV ads any more.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I enjoyed the adverts. they were zany, and seemed to channel the essence of nerd/dwork/dweeb…
I never used Ferrit- I looked at it when it started and decided that it wasn’t useful- Google & yellow pages online are as good, in terms of finding stuff, but I enjoyed the ads as being, well, weird.
Why did they name Ferrit get used? Why not Ferret, as in “to search”?
January 13th, 2009 at 10:46 am
I imagine, and I dont know, that it (ferrit) was a word play combining ferret and ‘a ferrit down your trousers’ representing a wildly zany excuse to get into wacky advertising campaigns (at great cost) to entice the geek within all of us.
Gag. I hate my marketing gene.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Buy a $3500 fridge off ferrit, pay shipping on top of that, then find the same fridge at the local retravision for $3100 all inc.
And, that , is why ferrit failed.
Telecom have wanted to build an online shopping site since around 1998.
Theresa is crap in a competitive environment.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:54 am
phobius: “Stuff Reports “Ferrit was seen as pet project of former chief executive Theresa Gattung…” ’nuff said”
Oh no..those poor sheep farmers who are now paying Theresa fat fees to ‘save’ the wool industry. Poor bastards. A sure way to kill off what remains of the wool industry.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
And don’t forget her old boss who is currently in chairman of Fletchers. If Walters leaves sell your fletcher shares.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I bought an excellent Kodak digital camera (8.2 mega pixels) for a bargain through Ferrit, but the annoying thing is that I got to the cheap camera through googling and going to other low price camera lists that just happened to link to Ferrit. This was after I had already tried Ferrit! Which showed that Ferrit in the end was a complete waste of time if I got more success by googling elsewhere. Telecom did a bad job setting up and maintaining the search engine on Ferrit…
January 13th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Credit where credit is due
At least Telecom shuts down shitty failing companies
Now can the new government please take note
I wont bother with a list, because everyone’s scroll bars will become too small
January 13th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Since when has it been the government’s role to “(shut) down shitty failing companies”?
January 14th, 2009 at 12:07 am
A better site is http://www.whatsonsale.co.nz
I think these guys have given it a much better go than ferrit, for starters they have actual discounts.