The Man Who Knows Amazon's Brutal Tactics Better Than Anyone Has A New Company With $55 Million In Funding
In 2010, Amazon bought Quidsi - the e-commerce company responsible for Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com, and other sites - for $540 million.
Quidsi's founders, Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara, made a killing, but the sale wasn't entirely sweet.
Before the acquisition, Amazon had more-or-less declared a pricing war against Diapers.com. Amazon started offering deep, deep discounts on diapers, trying to undercut the smaller company. This was not the first time that Amazon was willing to lose money temporarily to stave off a competitor. Not long after Amazon started its aggressive price chopping, Quidsi sold.
Lore and Bharara stayed at Quidsi for four years on contract after Amazon bought it, but they both left last July.
Now, Lore has assembled a team of more than 30 employees (including many former Quidsi people) to launch an ecommerce company called "Jet," Del Ray reports. Bharara will reportedly not be involved.
The site won't launch until later this year, partially because of a non-compete clause from Amazon that hasn't run out yet, Fortune sources report. Jet will operate out of Hoboken, New Jersey, and is working on an innovative logistics network, though we still don't know what the site will actually sell. Because Lore has already been up-close-and-personal with Amazon's most brutal competitive tactics and strategies, he's better prepared than anyone to take it on.
According to Fortune, Lore has expressed that after selling Quidsi to Amazon, he's ready to build something new and even bigger.
In other words, watch out Amazon.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.