Expanding into Europe was an expensive mistake, definitely. But the Samwer brothers are a dangerous team to play against, so I understand why they wanted to head them off at the pass. They just went about it in the wrong way, at least that's how it seems in hindsight.

Yeah but those guys don't threaten the US business. They might clone Groupon in Europe, but they're not going to expand out of Europe and take over Groupon in the US.

To try to head them off before you've taken enough profit in the US Is a curious combination of hubris and greed. Especially at that cost.

>>> To try to head them off before you've taken enough profit in the US Is a curious combination of hubris and greed. Especially at that cost.

This was my reaction as well.

Instead of working their business model here and continuing to ramp up profits and margins, they took a huge bet to get into Europe. Not sure why they thought this, considering there are a half dozen other countries you could try and get in front of first.

In the end, their panic more than anything killed the business. I would also say greed played a big part. Instead of building a solid, sustainable business over a period of time, they got greedy and over stepped their bounds.

i think their fulfillment issues came from allowing the producers, whom probably didnt ship a lot of product daily, to manage their own shipping. Generally you need to have a good shipping team to streamline packing and shipping to keep it on time and efficient.