Germany's Samwer Brothers Take Their Web Copycat Act Global

After stumbling, their Web venture pushes into hardware

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By Mark Milian

May 16, 2014 at 3:51 AM UTC

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This article is part of the May 19, 2014 issue of businessweek.

Germany's Samwer Brothers Take Their Web Copycat Act Global — The Samwer brothersPhotograph by Ruediger Niehmzow/Laif/Redux

Oliver, Marc, and Alexander Samwer have had a rocky couple of years. The German brothers had built their startup incubator, Rocket Internet, into a billion-dollar business by staking, staffing, and helping to launch clones of American shopping websites such as EBay and Groupon tailored for European consumers. Often, they persuaded the knockoffs’ U.S. counterparts to buy their websites. In the past two years, the Samwers have been forced to rethink that formula since the flash-sales site Fab eclipsed Rocket’s imitator in Europe, Bamarang. Fab’s success prompted companies such as Airbnb to fight the clones instead of paying them off. The Samwers declined to comment for this story.