"...I'd be much more likely to wind up at bigwords.com."
Bigwords.com shuts down:
thestandard.com
October 27, 2000, 5:56 PM PDT
End of Story for Bigwords.com
The college-textbook seller shuts down its 2 offices and lays off nearly 100 workers
after failing to secure more VC funding.
By Ronna Abramson
Despite having racked up some big-name
investors, college textbook seller
Bigwords.com has shut down its operations
in San Francisco and Kentucky and laid off
nearly 100 employees after failing to
secure more venture capital funding.
A message on the site posted Friday said
that the company "succumbed … to the
powers that be" and informed customers
that back orders and orders placed on or
after Oct. 20 would not be processed.
On Oct. 20, the company laid off about 70
employees in its South Park office in San
Francisco, along with six employees and 22
temporary employees at its new
distribution center in Kentucky, according
to several employees. Former Bigwords VP
of operations and Publisher Todd
Sotkiewicz, the company's 20th employee,
said everyone in San Francisco was let go
except the CEO, CFO and CTO. Company
co-founder and CEO Matt Johnson did not
return several calls to comment.
Sotkiewicz said employees were paid in full
for their work up until that date, and other
employees confirmed that they received
cashier's checks. Sotkiewicz attributed the company's demise to the
cooling attitude of investors toward e-commerce companies.
"We were looking for another round for strategic partners that
focused on the college opportunity," Sotkiewicz says. "I just think
that the financial community was not ready to support the
opportunity."
He stressed that the company's early investors had provided support.
"It was finding investors at that next level that was becoming more
and more difficult," he says.
The company's last round of investors, which included such
heavy-hitters as NBC and WPP Group (WPPGY) , owner of major
advertising agencies such as Young & Rubicam (YNR) and Ogilvy &
Mather Worldwide, handed Bigwords $30 million in June. Other
investors included 21st Century Internet Venture Partners, Geocapital
Partners, Media Technology Ventures, Attractor Investor
Management, Trans Cosmos USA and St. Paul Venture Capital.
Officials with NBC and WPP declined to comment on the company's
collapse.
Bigwords, known for guerilla marketing tactics that included dressing
student representatives in orange jumpsuits, announced plans last
summer to evolve from just a textbook seller to a media site with
original content and expanded e-commerce offerings, such as
clothing. The idea was to draw visitors – and generate revenue –
year-round, rather than just at the beginning of a new semester
twice a year, when most college students buy textbooks. Bigwords
even hired editors from such magazines as Details and Jane to create
an online magazine targeted to its 18- to 24-year-old market.
The company's closure came just a few months after it moved into a
larger, state-of-the-art distribution center in Kentucky – a move that
in hindsight some employees suggested might have been premature.
In September, the peak of the textbook buying season, Bigwords laid
off nearly 100 employees. Workers in the distribution center said the
company failed to meet projected sales.
"I was told we were actually hitting about 10 percent of what our
projections were," says Vern Reynolds, IT manager of the distribution
center and among the six laid off Oct. 20.
The farewell posting on the Bigwords Web site said it counted
800,000 unique visitors per month and about $14 million in sales.
The site's demise was greeted with mixed feelings among employees,
with some harboring resentment for being left in the dark about the
company's troubles and others regretful that they no longer are
employed at a place they loved to work.
"These people are pathological liars," one angry former Kentucky
employee laid off in September wrote in an e-mail. But Victoria
Wilinski, who relocated from San Francisco to Kentucky in December
and became director of operations and purchasing, said most people
were upset that the company "that won all our hearts no longer
employs them."
"I never worked at a company where the employees so believed in
the vision and were willing to sacrifice so much to see it work,"
Wilinski said in an e-mail.
Indeed, David Keeps, the editorial director in San Francisco who
formerly worked as the West Coast editor of Details magazine, said it
was disappointing that his team of 14 people could not realize their
vision of an online magazine for college-age readers, both male and
female.
"The sense of [having] just tasted the appetizers and not being able
to have the full meal was very evident," he says. |
