Multiply.com shutting down on May 6

In what could be a huge surprise, Mutiply Philippines has just announced that it will be shutting down operations on May 6, 2013. This is after a site re-design and massive marketing campaign in the whole of 2012.

Copy of the letter were sent to Multiply merchants today.

Dear Multiply Merchant,

We regret to inform you that Multiply will be closing the marketplace on May 6, 2013 and discontinuing all business operations by May 31, 2013.

Multiply will maintain normal site operations through May 6th and will wind things down through to the end of the month. We will use the rest of May to make sure that all accounts are settled and that you receive all funds you earned on the platform. We hope this provides you time needed to identify and migrate to alternative ecommerce platforms, settle all payments on items bought and delivered, and try to minimize disruption to your business.

In order to ensure that all your earnings are disbursed to you in full prior to May 31, we will cut off buying activity on May 6, 2013. This will ensure that all orders have sufficient time to be completed and delivered to your customers before the end of the month.

If you have a Trust Badge, please contact our customer support team and we will ensure that you receive a pro-rated refund for the remaining time on your subscription.

If my team can be of any assistance to you during this transition, we will do our best to help.

Respectfully yours,

Jack Madrid
Multiply Country Manager – Philippines

A similar notice has been posted on the Multiply site today.

A lot of huge merchants have been depending on Multiply for lead generation and we’ve reached out to some of them for comments.

According to Martin Bornilla of Widget City:

“Multiply has helped a lot of business, especially the start-up ones, to reach a lot of consumers thru email blasts, the common landing pages, and get customers connected to a wide variety of merchants. The site has helped us in marketing thru Facebook Ads, free shipping and free transaction fees. The subsidized products are also a huge help.”

An estimated 15% of Widget City’s business comes from Multiply.

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25 Comments

mike · 13 years ago

take a look at SEC – they spent a lot on paying their pinoy ph execs. which where not good enough

Lance · 13 years ago

Do you have hundreds (even less) or thousands of products in Multiply? Worrying about getting all of them before shutdown? I can get All your product listing data with all the pictures and package it up for you. Let me save you a ton of time – No joke. Message me for details – http://www.facebook.com/lance.luck.562. Hurry up as requests are pouring in.

Freeje · 13 years ago

I guess they thought that business would multiply but it didn’t. They went negative.

Edwin · 13 years ago

Here’s a theory that a conspiracy-theorist would love: Multiply was purchased by MIH to be killed. Its casual e-commerce growing popularity could be a threat to other MIH’s investments in Indonesia (Tokobagus) and the Philippines (Sulit). So they bought it, changed the casual environment into a stiff one with a system that rarely worked, and shut it down.

Interesting theory. Rather implausible, maybe, but interesting just the same.