1V1Y (Bir Varmış Bir Yokmuş)

What did it do?

1V1Y was an e-commerce site founded in 2011 as a partnership of 16 Turkish retail brands, including Kiğılı, Hotiç, İpekyol, Koton and Derimod. Named after Bir Varmış Bir Yokmuş, the Turkish equivalent of “once upon a time”, the site started out with a private shopping model, selling seasonal and limited-edition products through flash campaigns. In 2015 it struck a deal with Morhipo to sell each other's private-label brands.

Why did it shut down?

Yalçın Ayaydın, boss of İpekyol and one of the co-founders, told the Turkish business news site Patronlar Dünyası that the decision to liquidate had been taken because of economic events, and that e-commerce sites constantly demand capital. According to Webrazzi, some of the partner brands had come under economic strain before the closure, and some had closed shops. Ayaydın stressed that the company owed nobody money and would not seek a concordat (court-supervised debt restructuring). Although the partnership of strong brands secured product supply, when the partners' own core businesses were shaken, their willingness to keep funding the digital channel waned; this last sentence is an interpretation.

The story

In October 2011 familiar names in Turkish retail embarked on an unusual venture. Sixteen brands, including Kiğılı, Hotiç, Desa, İpekyol, Koton, Derimod, Zeki Triko, Saat&Saat and the Turkish arm of Diesel, set up a joint online shop. Its name came from the opening of Turkish fairy tales: Bir Varmış Bir Yokmuş, “once upon a time”, or 1V1Y for short. Patronlar Dünyası wrote that the most striking thing about the project was its founders; doyens of the industry, from Abdullah Kiğılı to Mehmet Hotiç, had come together on the same board.

1V1Y was born at the height of the private shopping model's popularity. In a 2011 market review by Webrazzi, the Turkish tech news site, it was described as the newest player, a joint platform of big retail companies focusing on seasonal and limited-edition products. By 2013 the team, led by founding general manager Gizem Burteçin, had grown to 110 people. In 2015 1V1Y and Morhipo, the shopping site of Turkish retail group Boyner, began selling each other's private-label brands under a deal covering more than 60 brands.

By 2018, however, the picture had changed. According to Webrazzi, some of the partners were in economic difficulty and some had closed their shops. There was almost nothing left to sell on the site. At the end of October 2018 news broke of the decision to liquidate the company, which had capital of 51 million TL. İpekyol boss Yalçın Ayaydın, in a statement to Patronlar Dünyası, attributed the decision to economic developments and summed up the situation in a single sentence: “E-commerce sites are companies that constantly demand capital.” Ayaydın also stressed that the company owed nobody money.

In November 2018 visitors to the site were greeted by a message saying that the operations carried on since 2011 had been suspended for a while. No report could be found of the partnership company returning to sales after this suspension, which the announcement called temporary. According to Internet Archive captures, however, a site selling products under the same name on the same domain has been live since August 2019; this research could not verify whether that site has any link to the company that decided to liquidate in 2018. The 1V1Y story shows that bringing strong brands together is not enough on its own: when the partners' own core businesses were shaken, the digital channel they had set up together could not survive either.

Lessons for founders

• A partnership model breaks at its weakest link when the partners' own businesses come under strain; have an independent funding plan.
• E-commerce demands constant capital; a long race cannot be won with a one-off injection of shared capital.
• If you are closing, a debt-free, orderly liquidation protects the brands' reputations.

Sources

1. 1V1Y, the fashion brands' e-commerce coalition, is closing (Webrazzi, 2018-11-02)
2. 1V1Y.com, set up by 16 famous bosses, is being liquidated... (Patronlar Dünyası, 2018-10-31)
3. Breaking: Is 1V1Y closing? 1V1Y enters liquidation (Habertürk, 2018-11-02)
4. E-commerce site 1v1y.com, operating since 2011, suspends operations (egirişim, 2018-11-19)
5. This week on Start-up Offices we visited the 1V1Y.com office (Webrazzi, 2013-05-23)
6. 1V1Y.COM home page, Internet Archive capture (Internet Archive, 2019-08-17)

This section is compiled from public sources (Wikidata, news archives and company announcements). Figures are given as they appear in those sources; unknown fields are left blank. If you spot a mistake in an entry, you can send us a correction.

Is something in this entry wrong? Request a correction → Method