Effetto, the U.K.–based online antiques marketplace, has shuttered. Its website is inactive, and its associated digital magazine, Effect, has ceased publication. A September LinkedIn post by founder and CEO Carmine Bruno confirmed the closure and alluded to a struggle to raise further funds while coping with a family health crisis.

“The casualty of the past 5 months is my business. I started this year with the need of raising investment to continue to drive the business forward and to see us through to profitability. Everything was going to plan until [the family member’s illness was diagnosed],” wrote Bruno. “I couldn’t support [him] and raise money for the company at the same time. Family had to come first.”

Effetto was founded in 2020, but its roots date back to the aughts, when Bruno started a digital antiques marketplace called Online Galleries—a site that featured dealers in the U.K. and Europe. The company was eventually acquired by 1stDibs in 2012, and Bruno himself joined as an executive. Seven years later, he quit to start his own venture.

Originally called The Bruno Effect, Effetto was in many ways a reaction to 1stDibs, which had drawn blowback from the dealer community for flipping to a transactional model and exercising tighter control over interactions between buyers and sellers. Bruno’s concept was to get back to basics: Charge dealers a monthly fee to list their pieces online, then get out of the way.

“[Buyers] should choose their journey,” he told host Dennis Scully on a 2022 episode of The Business of Home Podcast. “If your preference is to put your card into a checkout and have the item delivered, that’s your choice. But if you want to pick up the phone, you don’t want your calls recorded, you don’t want redaction in your emails, you want the freedom of knowing who you’re talking to, on your terms—that should be an option.”

Bruno largely funded Effetto himself and hit several roadblocks in the early days of the marketplace, including a delay in the development of the site that pushed back its launch date. Still, it attracted several hundred dealers and drew interest from designers. As part of an effort to court the trade, Bruno launched Effect, a digital publication focused on interior design. In 2023, he changed the name of the business from The Bruno Effect to Effetto.

Bruno did not return a request for comment. His post references a struggle to reach profitability—a challenge for any startup, though the fallout from the post-boom collapse of the U.S. housing market, combined with a sluggish European economy, certainly can’t have helped. Even 1stDibs, the company against which Bruno sought to draw a competitive distinction, has struggled with profitability: Its last quarter saw a shortfall of $3.3 million.

In his LinkedIn post, Bruno wrote that he’d be taking time off to contemplate his next venture, and thanked his staff and early clients. “I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the journey and I’m sad it’s prematurely come to an end.”