Gilt is an American online shopping launched in 2007.[3] On January 7, 2016, The company was sold to Hudson's Bay Company for approximately $250 million. Prior to the Hudson's Bay acquisition, sales were exceeding growth projections but the firm had not been profitable yet.[4][5][6][7] On June 4, 2018, Boston, Massachusetts-based Rue La La acquired Gilt from Hudson's Bay.[8]
The company was co-founded by Kevin P. Ryan, Michael Bryzek and Phong Nguyen, with Alexis Maybank, and Alexandra Wilson joining shortly after the company's inception;[9] who modeled Gilt after Vente-Privee, an online fashion retailer in France. The original business plan consisted of "flash sales," selling a limited number of luxury designer items at steep discounts for brief periods.[4]
The company launched women's clothing and accessories in November 2007 and menswear in April 2008. It added Gilt Groupe Japan, Gilt Fuse, and travel site Jetsetter in 2009.[10] It later added, Gilt City and Gilt Home in 2010 and Gilt Taste in 2011.[11]
In 2010, Gilt acquired luxury deal-of-the-day site Bergine.[15] This was the first of several acquisitions.
According to Business Insider, during its "hyper-growth years, the company overextended itself and lost focus", as the expanded business segments such as "Full-price retail, travel, and food were sucking resources from Gilt's core categories — discounted women's fashion", and Gilt was forced to sell these non-core businesses at a loss. Flash sales companies were also seeing slower growth, thanks in part to e-mail fatigue (the key means for flash sales to be promoted) with e-mail providers increasingly classifying these messages as spam). The IPO kept getting delayed and ending up never happening, while the firm never reached profitability.[citation needed] By 2015, Gilt was raising money "at a lower valuation than the $1 billion at which it reportedly raised $138 million in 2011". Such a cash infusion is known as "down round" which hurts employee morale and devalues the founders' stakes.[4][5][6][7]
In June 2018 it was announced the HBC would be selling Gilt to Rue La La.[17][18]
On October 2, 2019, Gilt Groupe and Simon Property Group announced a joint venture for ShopPremiumOutlets.com, an online shopping platform focused on its outlet malls, to create a new e-commerce platform dedicated to value shopping.[19]
Gilt Groupe visitors must be members in order to view sales. Sales last 36–48 hours and feature merchandise from a single brand or small groups of brands. The firm purchases vendor inventory at an extreme discount, adding a margin in order to make a profit. On August 22, 2011, Gilt Groupe added a Facebook shopping section.[20]Android and iPhoneapps allow mobile shopping, and access is also available for other smartphone and tablet devices.
Penguin Group printed a history of Gilt Groupe in 2012 written by two of its founders, Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson. By Invitation Only: How We Built Gilt and Changed the Way Millions Shop was published before Gilt was bought out by Hudson's Bay;[21] At that time the firm was valued at more than $1 billion,[22] over four times greater than its eventual selling price.
