What Was ZoZa.com?
Just four short years ago, money flowed like water and ideas were
plentiful in the Internet world. The notion of retaining an in-house
Zen abbot for e-commerce didn't warrant a second thought -- instead
it was embraced. As Casey Dunn, the former CTO of failed online
clothier Zoza.com says, "It was in the water." The former dot-com
executive developed this site to chronicle the birth of the online
store backed by the founders of Banana Republic. While some of the
technical details in this exhumation may seem dry, there's plenty
of interesting behind-the-scenes commentary. It's all here -- quirky
item pages resurrected and critiqued, an examination of unsuccessful
marketing efforts, and the failure to standardize sizing, which
led to return rates of 80%. While today's armchair analysts are
having a field day with the bursting of the bubble economy, sites
such as this one provide a fitting (and interesting) epitaph to
the demise of many a dot-com.