The Rise and Fall of a Dot-Com: Lessons Learned from LivingCo

Abstract

LivingCo was founded with a vision of revolutionizing the U.S. furniture industry by exploiting technological opportunities. It won accolades for its innovative website and generated considerable consumer interest, becoming at one stage one of the most highly trafficked sites on the Internet. Oracle named LivingCo a poster child because it was one of the first e-tailers to successfully deploy their software in both the front and back ends of the business. Furthermore, industry analysts considered many of its strategic plans promising. However, LivingCo ran into problems coping with overspending, high traffic on its website, integrating its technology with its subsidiary, suppliers who were wary of channel conflict and customers who were, in general, slow to adopt the new way of shopping for furniture.