Bamarang Türkiye

What did it do?

Bamarang Türkiye was an e-commerce site launched by Rocket Internet in February 2012 that sold design products through short-lived campaigns on the private shopping model. Webrazzi described the site as a clone of the US-based Fab.com. It had no direct competitor in the design products category in Turkey.

Why did it shut down?

No official statement was made about the closure. According to Webrazzi's assessment in May 2012, the site had reached 64,000 visitors a month but was down 6 per cent on the previous month. In early August 2012 Webrazzi wrote that it had heard Bamarang's operations had recently been wound up and that the site had been removed from Rocket's official list; a few days later Rocket Internet decided to shut down its Turkish operation entirely. Habertürk's 2017 round-up also noted that Bamarang closed when its investor pulled out of the country. The view of the founder of DesignLocks, set up the same year to sell design products, that the audience interested in such products was very limited offers a clue to how hard the category was at the time.

The story

In 2011 and 2012 Rocket Internet opened one site after another in Turkey. The German company's method was well known: quickly copy an internet model that worked abroad and grow it with a local team. In February 2012 a new one joined sites such as Zidaya, Sporena, Evimister and Westwing: Bamarang.

Bamarang sold design products on the private shopping model, in other words through short-lived campaigns. In its May 2012 dossier on Rocket Internet Turkey, Webrazzi described the site as a clone of the US-based Fab.com. According to the same assessment, Bamarang had no direct competitor in Turkey and, according to Google Ad Planner data, was drawing 64,000 visitors a month in May 2012. However, the site's only known growth figure showed a 6 per cent fall on the previous month.

By the summer, Rocket's priorities in Turkey had changed. When Webrazzi checked the Turkey list on the company's official website in early August 2012, Bamarang was missing, and it wrote that it had heard the site's operations had recently been wound up. A few days later, on 17 August 2012, Rocket Internet decided to shut down its Turkish operation entirely, and the other sites also sold off their stock and closed.

Bamarang's closure was never a news story in its own right. When the Turkish business site Patronlar Dünyası listed e-commerce sites that had closed in 2013, it added Bamarang.com.tr to the list. Habertürk's 2017 round-up included the site among the ventures that opened in 2012 and closed the same year, attributing the closure to the investor's withdrawal from the country. That same month, a team of former Rocket employees launched DesignLocks for design products; that site too would close a few months later.

Bamarang's story shows that there is no guarantee a copied model will find an audience in another market, and how quickly start-ups can disappear when decisions are made not by the local team but by a distant board.

Lessons for founders

• When copying a model that works in another market, measure the size of the target audience in your own market separately.
• If traffic starts falling in the first months, look at the repeat buyer rate before expanding your campaign calendar.
• If your fate depends on a single investor's decision about a country, think in advance about what could be saved if that decision changes.

Sources

1. Rocket Internet Turkey dossier (Webrazzi, 2012-05-08)
2. Rocket Internet's ventures in Turkey (Webrazzi, 2012-08-07)
3. Rocket Internet is shutting down its Turkish operation (Webrazzi, 2012-08-17)
4. The site founded by internet veterans has closed too (Patronlar Dünyası, 2013-11-07)
5. Turkish e-commerce sites that closed before Markafoni (Habertürk, 2017-06-02)

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