Is there any category that Quidsi can't get into? First, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon started with Diapers.com and the later expanded into Soap.com, BeautyBar.com, Wag.com and YoYo.com. Now it is moving into the grocery business with the addition of 10,000 shelf-stable items on the Soap.com website.
"Our philosophy is to make our customers' lives easier," said Marc Lore, CEO of Quidsi, in a press release. "We already carry a vast selection of health, beauty, and household essentials. Our customers have been asking about grocery since we launched in 2010. It was a seamless transition to offer a large selection of beverages, snacks and meal prep items for the whole family on Soap.com. Our goal is to continue to expand our product selection, and ultimately, help eliminate errands so our shoppers can spend more time doing the things they enjoy."
Grocery items carried by Soap.com will include coffee, tea, snacks, cereal, pasta, baking ingredients and canned items. As with all other orders made on Soap.com, consumers will get free one or two-day shipping, depending on location, for orders over $39.
Interestingly, with the move Quidsi is competing with is own parent company as well as all the other stores and websites that sell groceries. Ultimately, the fact that Quidsi might take some grocery sales away from Amazon should not be a concern, according to a GigaOm article, because it ultimately goes back to Jeff Bezos and company anyway.
The company, which was purchased by Amazon for $545 million in cash and assumed debt last year, had sales of $300 million in 2010, according to TechFlash.
