DailyCandy Founder: Comcast 'Destroyed the Brand'

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It's been a few months since Comcast made the decision to shutter DailyCandy and the site's founder, Dany Levy, is ready to shed some light on the situation. In a video interview with Inc., Levy explains how the deal with Comcast unfolded, from the rocky beginning that set the company off on the wrong foot to the downward spiral of failed features that the site could never recover from.

"We did the deal with Comcast on September 12, 2008," Levy said. "Lehman Brothers went under that weekend and the market crashed. If we had waited a day longer, the deal would have never happened."

In the face of the market crash, DailyCandy came up short on projected numbers and the relationship with Comcast deteriorated from there. Since ad dollars were down, the revenue had to be found from some other source. Swirl, a Gilt-type sale site, was launched and shuttered within two years. They tried copying Groupon's daily deal model. DailyCandy's bread-and-butter, the daily email newsletter, morphed into multiple dedicated emails per day. "To be frank with you, I unsubscribed," Levy said. "I couldn't watch it. It was like watching a train wreck."

At the end, Levy attributed the failure of the site to a loss of brand integrity. "What Comcast acquired was not necessarily a list," Levy said. "It was a brand. And it was a brand that was adored."

· What Went Wrong After DailyCandy's $125 Million Sale [Inc.]
· In Memoriam: DailyCandy [Racked]
· Holy Smokes: DailyCandy Will Shutter Next Week [Racked]