Kate Buggeln has been selling things all her working life. But selling investors and customers on the new look Boo.com, a name associated with the world's highest-profile dot com failure, is her biggest challenge yet.
The 39-year-old American has been charged with the revival task by fashionmall.com, the American fashion internet portal that paid an estimated £250,000 for Boo's brand, logo and the right to use its domain name after the e-tailer went into receivership this year. Ms Buggeln is relaunching Boo as a fashion and lifestyle site on Monday, and believes her team have learnt lessons from the collapse of Boo mark one.
"We want to bring to our customers the best of international style from interesting websites that we have located around the world", said Ms Buggeln, who hopes her 17 years' experience in the retail sector will help revive the site.
A history graduate from Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, Ms Buggeln began her career as an executive trainee at Bloomingdale's department stores. She has also worked with retailers to design and launch brand strategies and business models.
Despite the negative connotations attached to Boo.com - the company began trading in early November last year and went bust in May after investors refused to add to the estimated £80m they had poured into the firm - Ms Buggeln is determined to cash in on the well-known name that Boo established.
"Retaining the name Boo uses this awareness of the name to bring people to our site so they can see how great our product is", Ms Buggeln said.
She admitted to feeling fortunate that the original Boo team spent so much money on marketing. The high level of awareness they created is now helping her cause.
The brand, name and customers the new site targets, as well as the team's sensibility to style - "We have the same sort of irreverent sense of humour as our predecessors" - are, however, where the similarities between the original Boo and the new incarnation end. Ms Buggeln and her team number nine, whereas the original Boo employed between 300 and 400 people.
The new company is also financially secure. Fashionmall.com has about $27m in the bank. It is estimated that will last 10 years based on the current burn rate.
The new Boo also has a different business model. "We do not own and sell our own inventory, what we do is connect people to great e-tail sites and product. So our value to the visitor is about connecting them to interesting places through Boo.
"We have a very long-term view about this. We're not trying to take over the world in a year, we're trying to take over the world in a series of years."
The new Boo, which will focus on the American and British markets this year, offers users an unusual mix of products, such as clothes that have the customer's e-mail address put on them. These products are specifically aimed at the 18 to 30 trend-setting group of people which the site targets.
The site specialises in beauty products, clothes, gifts and toys - from hi-tech gadgets to motorcycles. There is also a community aspect to the site: users can talk to each other in the party section.
Whereas the original Boo focused on brands and, according to Ms Buggeln, was all about the fashion trend of the moment, the new Boo is about the product.
"We will have some of the same brands the original Boo had but when they are on our site it is not because of the brand, it is because the product is really cool."
Boo.com plans to make money through advertising and sponsorship appearing on the website. It is also developing a database that can be sold to companies which want to know about and target the people Boo.com attracts.
Ms Buggeln, who only expects to spend $1m on marketing, compared to the $40m the original Boo spent, predicts the site will be profitable in the near term, certainly within two years.
Her certainty of success is clear: "It will work because we are applying the lessons of the original Boo to a new business model and retaining all of the positive elements of the Boo brand."
