Chaos.com was an Australian online retailer based in Melbourne, that sold CDs,[1] DVDs,[2] games,[3] books[4] and music downloads over the Internet. Similar to Amazon.com, Chaos.com shipped to all countries around the world.[5] The website was founded in Sydney, Australia by its CEO Rob Appel in 1995,[6] it was the first Australian retailer to sell music over the Internet.[7]
History
Established in 1995 by Rob Appel under the name Chaos Music Market[8] it was one of the pioneers of Australian e-commerce and was able to grow quickly in its early years through an association with Australia's largest ISP at the time, OzEmail. Initially the service was located at the URL www.cmm.com.au, then moved to www.chaosmusic.com in 1998 and finally to www.chaos.com in 2003. The Chaos.com domain was previously registered to Professor Tony Rutkowski and used as a chaos theory discussion area before it was sold to Chaos Group Limited in 2003.
During the dot-com boom Chaos attracted the attention of Sydney entrepreneurs Malcolm Turnbull and David Coe who provided seed capital before the company was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in December 1999 raising A$15M as set out in the Chaos Music Limited Prospectus.[9] The Chaos board at the time included David Coe (chairman), Rob Appel (CEO), David Spence (OzEmail), Lucy Turnbull (FTR) and Victoria Doidge (marketing executive). Shortly after the listing the dot com crash hit the market the Chaos share price declined substantially over the next 3 years. Chaos continued to grow strongly through this period and was ranked as the fastest-growing company in Australia by