Third Wave Fashion // JANUARY 2014 // THE CONTENT + COMMERCE ISSUE | Page 21

SPECIAL FEATURE
// CONTENT & COMMERCE

It’s not easy
doing content
& commerce.
Here are three cautionary tales…

REFER.LY | Run time: One Year, One Month
Refer.Ly launched in May 2012 as a Y Combinator incubated startup. They
focused on a new way of gathering quality content and attaching affiliate
income to the content. A month later, they said that they were pivoting to a
new model (the site still says this), but the founder has since moved on; she’s
now listed online as CEO of a new data company, Mattermark. The site had
raised $1M in funding.

REFINERY29 COMMERCE |
Run time: One Year, Four Months 

Refinery29 is a successful publisher who now uses affiliate
links widely, but their experiment in commerce was short
lived. They expected commerce to generate 25% of their
revenue; it ended up being more like 5%. (The founders
went on record saying that this was because the
advertising revenue did so well, and managed to raise an
additional $20M for growth.
(Further reading here.)

WANTFUL |
Run time: Two years, Nine months
Wantful launched in early 2011 and served as a personalized gift giving
service. Blaming a lack of follow-on investment, the site shut down abruptly
in September of 2013. The site had raised $5.5M in investment but the founder
said that additional capital was needed to maintain the fast growth.
(Further reading here.)

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