Ferrit, RIP
New Zealand comparison shopping engine Ferrit is no more. They blew through an incredible amount of money, had their day in the sun, and now they are gone.
I'm sad about that. Not because they were a past client of Netconcepts (back when they had money). But because they were a comparison shopping engine that had a shot at making it - of successfully crossing over into the mainstream. Indeed, much of New Zealand knew of Ferrit, due in large part to the series of funny TV commercials they became known for. Here's one of my favorites, below.
"A book on India"! Haha, umm, not exactly! Oh, and the donkey came from a "completely different website". Classic!
Brand recognition of Ferrit was high among consumers. But yet they weren't moving product.
Is there a lesson to be learned for the global comparison shopping engines? Certainly nothing to be learned by Google for Google Product Search. But for everyone else (Shopzilla, Become, TheFind, etc.), sure. I think the lesson is in how to "cross the chasm" into the mainstream and live to tell the tale.
6 comments
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There is no comparison between ferrit and thefind.com or shopzilla.com. The size of the markets in new zealand and united states is vastly different, so you cannot compare these businesses.
Comment by Devy [Visitor] — 01/31/09 @ 01:57
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Thank you for including TheFind in your post but we rightly are not comparison shopping site trying to make a chasm crossing. Your comments though on crossing the chasm from interesting to a few people to relevant to many are absolutely right on for any startup venture including us. I agree that it is really important to build a loyal audience for what you offer and not just focus on brand recognition.
It's worth recalling that Shopzilla/Bizrate did cross the chasm in the business sense that they became profitable and were then acquired by a large media company (Scripps) for a significant amount. The comparison shopping concept was attractive in the recent past, when companies like Shopzilla, Shopping.com grew to become category leaders. That concept is now extremely mature and has many incumbent players but faces stagnant growth in Internet terms.
TheFind is taking a comprehensive approach and not repeating a comparison shopping model. TheFind is unlike a comparison shopping site in that we do not require product feeds, do not have a pay to play CPC model, do not focus on building arbitrage traffic via SEM.
TheFind is built from the ground-up as a search engine similar to Web search engines but with different algorithms specifically for the vertical shopping category. Our goal in developing the technology is to provide the consumer with a rich experience of finding every product from every store as well as all other germane information to find exactly what they want to buy. Today for the US market, we cover 500,000 e-commerce sites and index over 300,000,000 products - a typical comparison engine would have 10 to 15 million products from 3,000 to 5,000 merchants.
What we do is technically complex but has enormous value in enabling a better consumer experience for online shopping. This is what we hope will build us a loyal consumer following.
We are not focussed on sock puppets and clever TV ads just yet :)
Cheers
SivaComment by Siva [Visitor] · http://www.TheFind.com — 02/04/09 @ 10:16
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It is sad to see such a firm go under, if only they had implemented the right SEO and PPC strategy.
Comment by SEO AU [Visitor]
· http://www.adaid.com.au —
02/22/09 @ 00:49
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sad to hear for what happened to ferrit but that is business. some goes up, some goes down. we just have to be keen in finding another SEO
Comment by kenneth sena [Visitor] · http://www.kika.ca — 04/02/09 @ 18:46
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Of course, Ferrit can not be compared with TheFind and others. It is our life and there is nothing to do with it. Yes, it is a pity but I agree with Kenneth that some goes up and some goes down but let's hope for the best.
Comment by Russian Bride [Visitor] · http://www.behappy2day.com — 04/17/09 @ 05:03
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This kind of sad. Good info, hopefully the economy will come back
Comment by onesource [Visitor] · http://onesource.eordersonline.com — 05/08/09 @ 15:03
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