Butikbebe.com

What did it do?

Butikbebe.com was a private shopping site set up within Netset Group that sold products for mothers, mothers-to-be and babies through short-lived campaigns. Alongside product sales, it also ran campaigns focused on services and events. In 2014 it opened Butikbebe.az for the Azerbaijani market.

Why did it shut down?

The company made no statement about its closure; in a March 2017 report Webrazzi, the Turkish tech news site, wrote that there was no clear information on when or why it had closed, but that it had heard the company's business had slowed and it had shrunk its team. A 2017 round-up by Habertürk also noted that the site had closed without giving any reason. In 2012 Butikbebe was aiming to lead mother-and-baby private shopping, and Paramini, the private shopping site of its rival ebebek, had recently closed. Considering that big private shopping sites such as Markafoni and Limango were also struggling at the time, the model's general loss of momentum may have played a part in the closure; this is an interpretation.

The story

Mother-and-baby products were one of the liveliest categories in e-commerce. Netset Group, formed through the merger of several companies, entered the field in 2011 with a private shopping model and launched Butikbebe.com. The site sold products for mothers, mothers-to-be and babies at a discount through short-lived campaigns, and also made service- and event-focused sales.

According to a Webrazzi report in September 2012, Butikbebe had by then reached around 300,000 members, was shipping an average of 400 orders a day and was opening around 50 new campaigns a week. Its first-year turnover was estimated at around 7.5 million TL. Özgür Aksakallı, co-founder of Netset Group, said they wanted to lead their category in 2013. The group had spent around 5 million TL on Butikbebe and its sister site Markduck, and employed a team of 35. Television advertising began in October 2012.

Growth continued for a while. In August 2014 Butikbebe was dispatching an average of 800 to 1,000 parcels a day and targeting turnover of 12 to 14 million TL for the year. Around the same time a dedicated site for the Azerbaijani market, Butikbebe.az, was opened.

What followed was silence. In March 2017 Webrazzi wrote that, according to comments online, the site might have closed one and a half to two months earlier. There were reports that the company's business had slowed and that it had shrunk its team, but there was no official statement. Its Facebook page, once held up as an example for its successful campaigns, had also been closed. In a list of closed e-commerce sites compiled by Habertürk the same year, the only note against Butikbebe was that it had closed without giving a reason.

Butikbebe remains one of the vertical start-ups founded at the peak of the private shopping wave that quietly disappeared when the wave receded.

Lessons for founders

• Leading a vertical category is not enough; if the sales model you chose is falling out of favour in the market, category leadership will not protect you either.
• Growth accelerated by television advertising can slow just as fast when the advertising budget is cut.
• When you close, explain yourself to your customers and community; a brand that closes quietly leaves question marks behind.

Sources

1. Mother-and-baby e-commerce site Butikbebe.com closes (in Turkish) (Webrazzi, 2017-03-24)
2. ButikBebe.com wants to lead mother-and-baby private shopping (in Turkish) (Webrazzi, 2012-09-12)
3. Turkish e-commerce sites that closed before Markafoni: why did online shopping sites shut down? (in Turkish) (Habertürk, 2017-06-02)
4. Butikbebe.com, the e-commerce site selling mother-and-baby products, closes (in Turkish) (egirişim, 2017-03-24)
5. Private shopping sites that closed before Markafoni (in Turkish) (Webrazzi, 2017-06-01)

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