After Amazon snapped BuyVIP away from eBay in the first stages of a significant cooperative initiative, eBay has now successfully acquired Brands4Friends (press release):
“eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY) today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire all of the shares of brands4friends, Germany’s largest online shopping club for fashion and lifestyle, for cash at a transaction value of approximately US$200 million (EUR150 million).”
“As part of the deal eBay will assume brands4friends’ equity interests in U.K. shopping club SecretSales.com and in Japan, brands4friends.jp.”
The European market for private shopping clubs has been forced to reorganize after new players such as Showroom Privé entered the already overcrowded space.
At the beginning of the year, Tengelmann purportedly paid 10 million euro for their 10% stake of Brands4Friends. Amazon took BuyVIP for 70 million euro.
Ruelala along with Smartbargains went last year to GSI Commerce for $350 million.
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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