# Why Did Markafoni Shut Down?

- URL: https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/blog/why-did-markafoni-shut-down/
- Published: 2026-10-29
- Updated: 2026-10-29
- Category: Starting and growing a business
- Publisher: Girişimci Kafası

On 25 September 2014, Markafoni's new CEO İlker Baydar stood on the Webrazzi Summit stage and ran through the numbers. According to Webrazzi, the Turkish tech news site, the shop had reached around 7 million members, 20 million visitors a month and a team of 600. On its worst days it made 20,000 sales, and 50,000 to 55,000 a day in season. Behind it stood a 25,000-square-metre logistics centre able to ship 70,000 parcels a day, and a building with 14 photo studios.

Two years and eight months later, on 1 June 2017, the company issued a short statement. As BusinessTech reported it, the statement said that despite initial success the business was not scaling sufficiently to be sustainable, and that in a challenging economic environment for this type of business the decision had been taken to close. The site shut on 30 June 2017. Why were the numbers at the top not enough?

## What did it do?

Markafoni was founded in 2008 by Sina Afra, Ahmet Emre Sarı and Tolga Tatari. According to Bloomberg HT, it started out with $300,000. The model was little known in Turkey: a private shopping site you could join only by invitation. Branded clothing and accessories were sold at a discount in sales that lasted a few days.

The start was fast. According to a round-up by Webrazzi, by January 2009 it was selling around 500 items per sale and its first foreign investor had come on board with a 15% stake. In March 2010 the site reached 870,000 members and raised 11 million Turkish lira. According to a 2011 Para Dergisi report cited by Bloomberg HT, the company had been profitable since 2009, with turnover growing by 30 to 40% every month.

The strength of the idea was time. Little stock, a short window and a crowded member list. When a sale ended the door closed, and you waited for the next one the following morning.

## What went wrong?

Growth attracted international capital, but the market walked in another direction. The timeline below comes from published figures.

- **2011:** MIH Allegro, part of Naspers, bought 71.2% of the company. According to Webrazzi, executives at the time put the valuation at between $200 million and $210 million. The same year Zizigo was set up for shoes and Miss Pera for cosmetics, and the business launched in Poland after Australia, Ukraine and Greece.
- **2014:** Naspers bought the remaining 28.8%. Sina Afra left the company and İlker Baydar took over.
- **2015:** In the Perapost and CRIF ranking cited by Bloomberg HT, Trendyol was 21st and Markafoni 60th.
- **2016:** Zizigo and Miss Pera were closed and their traffic redirected to the main site. At the start of the year a physical store opened in Zorlu Center.
- **January 2017:** According to the IAB Turkey report cited by Bloomberg HT, Markafoni had more than 2 million real users a month. Trendyol had twice as many.
- **1 June 2017:** The closure was announced.

The Naspers side of the story arrives at the same place. According to Bloomberg HT, Meloy Horn, head of investor relations at Naspers, said they had wanted to turn Markafoni into an in-season shopping destination, that the targets had not been met and that the balance between revenue and costs was not sustainable. Naspers had covered the losses, cut costs and considered a sale, but did not find market conditions suitable. Shoppers were moving from short-lived discounts to sites offering a wide range at any time.

The story has a second act. According to Webrazzi, Cafer Mahiroğlu, chairman of the UK-based Select, bought the brand for $15 million on 10 July 2017. Patronlar Dünyası wrote that the sum was paid for the rights to the name. The plan was ambitious: another $15 million of investment, a team of 600 and a move into Europe in 2018. The site reopened on 22 August 2017. According to a Patronlar Dünyası report dated 19 March 2019, it had closed a second time and the address was redirecting to Selectmoda.com.

Markafoni was not alone. On the day of the closure, Webrazzi published a list of private shopping sites that had shut before it: VipDükkan announced its decision to close in July 2013, and Limango left Turkey in March 2015.

## Lessons for founders

- **If your model's appeal depends on a habit, prepare your transformation plan before the habit changes.** Private shopping was a discovery in the years when buying clothes online was new. The 2015 ranking showed that the direction had already changed.
- **Volume is not the same as scale.** A site making tens of thousands of sales a day said in its closing statement that it could not scale. As the warehouse, the studios and the headcount grow, measure what each sale leaves behind together with [whether customers come back](https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/blog/what-is-customer-churn/).
- **A founder's departure is a quiet cost.** The founding CEO left in the year full control changed hands. When you negotiate an acquisition, talk about who will carry the company's direction as well as the price.
- **A well-known name does not replace a working model.** The rights to the name, bought for $15 million in 2017, did not keep the site alive for even two years.

Markafoni's record sits in the [Startup Graveyard](https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/startup-graveyard/markafoni/). Other companies that closed for the same reason are on the [business model did not work](https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/startup-graveyard/cause/business-model-failed/) page.

## Campaign: a season in the field

The Turkish word kampanya came from the Italian campagna. According to Wiktionary, the Italian word means countryside and farmland. Its roots go back to the Late Latin campania, open country and battlefield, and from there to campus, a field. The military sense grew from this: an army takes to the field, fights for a while and returns. The commercial sense in Turkish carries the same limit: a discounted sale held for a set period.

Markafoni's business was a series of campaigns. Each one could be won, but the problem lay between them. In 1973 the biologist Leigh Van Valen described the natural counterpart in his paper "A New Evolutionary Law": because its rivals keep changing too, a species must keep changing just to stay where it is. He named the idea after Lewis Carroll's Red Queen. In 1996 William Barnett and Morten Hansen carried it over to companies in the Strategic Management Journal: everything one firm learns puts pressure on its rival, the rival learns more, and the race speeds up.

Markafoni's 2014 figures were a snapshot of speed rather than of gain. When the market began to run faster, that speed was only enough to stand still.

> "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871), chapter 2. The Red Queen tells Alice that here it takes all your running to stay in place, and that to get anywhere else you must run at least twice as fast.

While your numbers grow, how hard are you running just to stay where you are?