Quidsi is following a familiar path. It's opening another website, taking off on a new and separate direction than it has gone before with the launches of previous sites: BeautyBar.com, Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com and YoYo.com.
As with other Quidsi ventures, the newest site, Casa.com ("Everything for your home"), will offer a broad selection of products (over 35,000), free one-to-two day delivery on purchases of $49 or more, and full refunds for 365 days from the date of purchase for any reason.
The company continues to roll out sites in new categories similar to what it was doing before being acquired by Amazon.com in 2010.
"They pretty much left us to continue with the vision and strategy that we put forth before the acquisition," Marc Lore, CEO of Quidsi, told The Wall Street Journal. "We have enough oversight to get resources and capital to make our vision happen, but not too much so that it stifles."
One difference Quidsi has had from its parent company, at least to this point, is the willingness to test physical stores. Quidsi opened a BeautyBar store on Long Island with positive results, according to COO Vinit Bharara.
"We're excited by the results so far," Mr. Bharara told Reuters. "These things, if you do it right, and generate the right customer demand they're not done as loss leaders or anything like that. The financials make sense."
Quidsi will be looking at possibly opening other stores for new ventures going forward where it makes sense.
Speculation has been that Quidsi will soon be moving into sporting goods. Analysts from Credit Suisse wrote a note to investors claiming that job postings by the company suggested it was looking to launch a site to compete with retailers such as Cabela's and Dick's Sporting Goods.
