A North Carolina warehouse has sued a defunct Monroe dot-com, claiming the company did not pay for books, videos and games it shipped.
AlphaCraze.com, which attempted to emulate Amazon.com Inc.”™s formula by selling books, videos and CDs online, has been sued for $2.7 million by Baker & Taylor Inc. of Charlotte, N.C. The company is seeking a court-ordered attachment on properties, vehicles, bank accounts and a boat owned by defendants.
AlphaCraze.com did not immediately file court papers responding to the allegations, and its principals could not immediately be reached for comment.
The company appears no longer to be operating, according to the Better Business Bureau. On Amazon.com, which had a partnership with AlphaCraze.com, anonymous people had posted comments on the company through this past August. While Amazon.com still maintained an Alphacraze.com “storefront” on its Web site as of late December, just 30 titles were listed with the “currently unavailable” label attached to each.
The company would not be the first dot-com to evaporate, of course ”“ analysts say the sector has a better than 50 percent attrition rate. Rather than winding down its affairs in an orderly fashion, however, Baker & Taylor claims AlphaCraze continued selling goods without paying for the backend shipments.
Alphacraze.com was founded by Michael Shelton and Matthew Foy; and backed by Alan Avery, the former CEO of a onetime Norwalk company called Gem Communications who now lives in Texas.
Shelton and Foy grew up together in Kirkwood, Mo., according to the St. Louis Business Journal, which chronicled the company after its 1998 launch.
The company reportedly received roughly $1 million in seed capital from Avery and other investors, inking distribution agreements with Baker & Taylor, Ingram Micro, and publishers able to mail direct to customers.
Baker & Taylor operates a behind-the-scenes “drop ship” warehouse for companies like AlphaCraze.com, shipping items to customers and invoicing its online retailer clients after the sale.
“When a consumer ordered a product from AlphaCraze”™s Web site, Baker & Taylor would pick and pack the product, and ship it directly to the consumer”™s residence,” said James Melton, the company”™s chief financial officer, in a court affidavit. “The process
