October 24, 2000

10:22 AM

mylackey.com (an overpriced errand service) closed shop...and I'm disappointed that there's no secret message in the source code.
posted by gluechunk (7 comments total)

Wow. That whole "MyLackey for president" ad campaign really was as ineffectual as it seemed. Just envision it: half the buses in Seattle decorated with cryptic slogans and some sort of strange line drawing, and all most of us could make of them was that they were ads for some dotcom that was really wasting its money.
posted by grimmelm at 10:37 AM on October 24, 2000

Dang! I was sincerely hoping they'd expand to SF, there are a few things I have no time to do (like oil changes, bike repairs, etc) that I would have gladly paid mylackey to do.

So let's look at mylackey.com for a second. It was a nice site, and I'm sure the programmers were proficient enough to build a decent customer experience on the site. Their prices were a bit high, so they definitely weren't losing money on each customer (unlike kozmo), so was this all due to a bad business team? They were wasting their money on advertising? What were they thinking? They already have a good buzz and word of mouth (which is better than any advertising you could ever pay for). It sounds like the MBAs pissing away their investment money was the problem.
posted by mathowie at 11:14 AM on October 24, 2000

mathowie: the fact that the ad campaign gave little clue as to what the service actually did may have had something to do with it. I've had mylackey ads crammed down my throat for months now and I still don't really know what it is they're supposed to do for you. Come to think of it, the ad campaign was sufficiently un-compelling that I never even bothered to look at their web site to find out.

Good buzz? Word of mouth? your experience obviously differs from mine...

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 1:09 PM on October 24, 2000

I mean good buzz and word of mouth in that everyone I know that uses kozmo and webvan knows about and wants something like mylackey. The mylackey site conveyed it really well (at least they did when I visited a few months ago). They had set prices for a list of common activities, and a request-response setup for other requests. It was basically just re-badging local businesses, instead of MerryMaids coming over to clean your house, it was MyLackey.com's maid service. Seems like they could have become a nice middle-man type business with very little effort. They basically had the high profile storefront that could link anyone to a local mom-and-pop service oriented business. It could have been a real boom to mechanics, maids, pet care services, and the like.
posted by mathowie at 2:47 PM on October 24, 2000

Isn't Streamline kind of like mylackey? I admit I've never used either, but Streamline appears to offer some similar services... though I don't really think I want them to be able to access my property, even if they're the only ones to know the combination [of a locker they install in your garage/etc.]

[Interesting side note: just noticed the local Streamline, which used to be Scotty's Home Delivery, is now owned by Peapod, and the services - dry cleaning, etc. - are gone.]
posted by hijinx at 7:06 PM on October 24, 2000

ps: Webvan is fantastic. But I can't understand how they're making money... cue scary music!
posted by hijinx at 7:07 PM on October 24, 2000

web van *would* be fantastic if they would be smart enough to ferret stored list information from peapod.
posted by patricking at 10:30 PM on October 24, 2000