First shoes, now diapers. Amazon is reportedly about to announce on Monday the acquisition of Quidsi, the New Jersey-based ecommerce company behind Diapers.com, Soap.com, and, most recently, BeautyBar.com. Fortune’s Dan Primack, who broke the story from a maternity ward in Boston where his daughter was just born (no joke), puts the price of the all-cash deal at $540 million. A year ago, Amazon bought online shoe retailer Zappos for $1.2 billion.
Update: the deal was confirmed – read more here.
Founded by Vinit Bharara and Marc Lore, Quidsi has raised a total of $78.5 million. Its most recent funding was a $20 million debt round last April from investors including Accel, Bessemer, MentorTech, and New Enterprise Associates.
Diapers.com is the company’s flagship brand, with an estimated $300-million revenue run rate this year. Soap.com just launched in June, and BeautyBar.com launched last week. So the vast majority of revenues is still coming from Diapers.com, which would value the deal at less than 2X revenues. Feeling threatened, Amazon recently started undercutting Diapers.com on price, a strategy which may have helped convince them to sell.
If the deal goes through, it would just go to show that you can still build an ecommerce startup if you go after the right niche. But it would also prove that if you get big enough, Amazon will notice and either buy you or try to squash you.
Quidsi is one of the world’s fastest growing e-commerce companies and parent of Diapers.com (baby care), Soap.com (household essentials) and BeautyBar.com (prestige beauty). The company’s mission is to make life easier by creating a new type of e-commerce experience, delivering in 1-2 days, and providing incredible customer service. Quidsi is redefining e-commerce by combining the focus and customer connection of a specialty store with the scale, efficiency, choice, value and reliability of a massive global retailer.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...
Diapers.com is the largest online baby care specialty site in the United States, offering everything moms and dads need for their babies, including diapers, wipes, formula, baby food, shampoo, strollers and more. Diapers.com makes life easier for parents by offering the lowest prices online, along with the convenience of fast, free next-day shipping and a level of customer service that is shockingly great. Thanks to an ever-expanding brigade of more than 500,000 happy moms and dads who cheerfully spread...
Soap.com is the largest online specialty store for health, beauty, personal care and household essentials, offering more than 25,000 products – everything from paper towels and laundry detergent to toothpaste, vitamins, makeup, and shampoo – all shipped for free and overnight to most of the country. Soap.com is the newest member of the Quidsi family, which is also the parent company of Diapers.com, the world’s fastest growing e-commerce site. Soap.com provides consumers with the focus, attention and service of...
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