Zap! It's all over for ZapitOver
Tuesday February 20, 2001
Another day, another dot.com demise.
Today it was the turn of ZapitOver, the London-focused rapid-delivery service, which threw in the towel after failing to find further investment.
In a statement on ZapitOver’s website, the founders bid farewell to its customers and instigated a clearance sale, offering most items at half price.
“After months of toil in the rapid-delivery market we’ve finally reached the end.
“We’ve watched all our competitors go bust and soldiered on but, due to lack of investment, we have to close,” said the statement.
The site will eventually close at the end of the month with the loss of 10 jobs.
ZapitOver was the brainchild of Will Sankey, former media planning and buying director of BMP DDB, and Elliot Ronald, a former management consultant from Ernst & Young.
It was originally set up as a Wap service, called WapitOver.
After Wap failed to take off, it became clear it was necessary to take the service onto other channels, such as the web and the telephone.
The name ZapitOver was chosen as a more generic name in December last year.
ZapitOver’s reinvention was short-lived, as crucial funding was required to take the business forward.
The demise of competitors Urban Fetch, BagsOfTime.com and Koobuycity did nothing to aid investor confidence in ZapitOver’s business model.
This centred on delivering convenience goods in London within the hour.
A spokesman for ZapitOver said: “Not only did the dot.com climate go cold but investor confidence was severely dented after what happened to our competitors.”
To survive for another six months, the site was asking for just £250,000.
Another problem was demand for such a latent service.
ZapitOver needed at least 100 deliveries a day to break even but only managed to average around 40 a day.
ZapitOver was set up at the end of August last year as a joint venture between 86 Ltd, a digital consultancy, and Deliverance, an existing London-based food delivery service.
It is thought ZapitOver’s assets, such as its technology platform and server, will now be bought up by 86 Ltd.
