Hudson’s Bay Near Deal to Buy Online Retailer Gilt Groupe for $250M

wsj.com

17 points·jdoliner··5 comments

I used to watch for their flash sales regularly & actually buy stuff at Gilt. There were some great deals to be had in their early days. Then they moved so far up-market that I might as well have just walked into a Nordstrom or Bloomingdales and paid regular price.

Completely agree. Often I'd look on the designer's website and find the exact price listed - even though Gilt said it was heavily discounted.

After my last shopping experience with them, I won't be buying again. Whilst it took several weeks for my items to arrive as they picked a cheap shipping option (which I don't really mind), they expected me to pay for fast delivery back to the US when I had to return the items. In the end, I received a little more than £100 back from an order that cost almost £200.

Summary without the paywall: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-gilt-groupe-m-a-hbc-idUSKB...

My spouse works for Saks / HBC. They just gutted their health plan and did a sweep of layoffs in the NYC office. Seemed to be cutting their spending to bare bones this fall. Curious if acquiring Gilt was the plan all along.

HBC does not operate anything like what a Gilt employee is likely used to.. will be a tough pill to swallow

Interesting. Both the CEO and the President are former Travelocity execs.

The total of all rounds of VC funding for Gilt was $280M.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com