Andy Euroman asked:
In 2000, when the dotcom craze was still ongoing, I purchased a PalmPilot online, for a price that was unbeatable on the market at that time. I don’t remember the name of the site, but I do remember the concept: the company was aggregating buyers for pre-selected products. The more people committed to buying a certain item, the lower the price went. As for my Palm V, the site has registered the
maximum number of 1000 committed buyers in a matter of two days or so.
But then the problems started. The company sent me an e-mail saying that it hasn’t received the shipment of Palms yet and asked me to wait. Eventually I did receive my Palm. But the company went out of business pretty soon afterwards and I have never seen the same idea been implemented successfully.
The concept still seems very smart to me so I am curious: why did the online buyer aggregators fail?