Urbanfetch, founded in 1999 and closed down in 2000, was a

dot-com company A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com (alternatively rendered dot.com, dot com, dotcom or .com), is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website on the World Wide Web that uses the popular top-level domain ...

which enabled customers to order products (DVDs, music, books, snacks, gifts, etc.) online and have them delivered by bike messenger in less than an hour within certain delivery areas covering most of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. The company's business plan was essentially identical to that of

Kozmo.com Kozmo.com was a venture-capital-funded online company that promised free one-hour delivery of "videos, games, dvds, music, mags, books, food, basics & more" and Starbucks coffee in several major cities in the United States. It was founded by youn ...

, which led to a lawsuit from them. Apparently, the founder of Urbanfetch, Ross Stevens, had been approached to fund Kozmo, but instead launched a competing business with an identical business model. The suit was settled in December 1999. Urbanfetch, like Kozmo, charged no delivery fee and sometimes offered significant discounts. Urbanfetch also gave away free T-shirts and hats with each order when it first launched and provided free warm cookies with each order. It ceased operations in October 2000. Its corporate delivery division was sold to Urban Express, a traditional courier service. Urbanfetch became somewhat of a joke after an episode of

The Daily Show ''The Daily Show'' is an American late-night talk and satirical news television program. It airs each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central with release shortly after on Paramount+. ''The Daily Show'' draws its comedy and satire form fr ...

parodied their business model to the Post Office. Schmitt and Brown in their ''Build Your Own Garage'' (2010) conclude that the company “was buzz only and lacked a rigorous business model”.

References

Online retailers of the United States Defunct websites Dot-com bubble Internet properties established in 1999 Defunct online companies of the United States Defunct companies based in New York City Internet properties disestablished in 2000 1999 establishments in New York (state) {{ict-company-stub