Oneline retailer Amazon has announced it will shutdown Quidsi, one of its largest-ever acquisitions, which runs six shopping sites, including Diapers.com, Soap.com and Wag.com. The shutdown will result in layoffs of 263 people, according to a New Jersey state filing, buut Bloomberg, which first reported the news, said some of these employees would be able to apply for new positions at Amazon.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson blamed the shutdown on profitability issues.
“We have worked extremely hard for the past seven years to get Quidsi to be profitable, and unfortunately we have not been able to do so,” the statement said. “Quidsi has great brand expertise and they will continue to offer selection on Amazon.com; the software development team will focus on building technology for AmazonFresh.”
The spokesperson did not say when the sites are going offline.
Amazon bought Quidsi almost six years ago in a deal valued at around $545 million — the company’s fourth-largest purchase as of now. The acquisition was the culmination of an intense price battle between the companies that were threatening to push Jersey City-based Quidsi out of business.
Quidsi’s co-founder and then-CEO Marc Lore worked at Amazon for a few years following the deal but later went ont to launch an Amazon competitor, Jet.com, in 2015, which he sold last year to Walmart for $3.3 billion. Lore now runs all U.S. e-commerce operations for Walmart.