Hudson's Bay is selling Gilt Groupe to Rue La La, two years after buying the ecommerce site for $250M; sources say the new deal is well below $100M
Suzanne Kapner / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
Hudson's Bay paid about $250M for flash-sale site Gilt Groupe at the start of 2016, sealing a deal first reported weeks earlier — an acquisition meant to give the Saks Fifth Avenue owner digital reach. Two years on, sources say Rue La La is taking Gilt off its hands for well below $100M, erasing most of that outlay.
The markdown fits a pattern already visible across the category: Groupon cut staff at Ideel, another flash-sale site bought for $43M, within a year of acquiring it, and home-furnishings flash retailer One Kings Lane sold for less than $30M after once being valued near $900M.
First-order effects
- Hudson's Bay books a loss of more than half its $250M purchase price and exits a business it acquired as a growth engine, while Rue La La absorbs a rival's customer base and inventory relationships at a distressed price.
Second-order effects
- Consolidation among flash-sale operators leaves fewer destinations for brand partners' excess inventory, strengthening the pricing leverage of surviving players like Rue La La and pressuring any remaining standalone sites toward similar exits.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Ideel's layoffs, One Kings Lane's collapse from a $900M valuation, now Gilt's fire sale — department-store owners will keep retreating from owned ecommerce properties toward partnerships or separations, a path Hudson's Bay itself later took by spinning Saks' website into a separately funded business.
The trend: The flash-sale model built on discounted luxury inventory is consolidating into a few survivors as retail conglomerates unwind the acquisitions they made during its peak.