Gilt Taste
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Gilt Taste was Gilt Groupe's high-end food and wine vertical, a marketplace for artisan groceries and products usually available only to chefs. Former Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl served as editorial adviser, and the offering sat alongside Gilt's fashion flash-sales businesses.
02 / Gilt Taste FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors
Gilt Groupe that Gilt Taste was folded into Gilt Home on a seasonal basis because Taste customers predominately shopped during peak holiday times and there was significant overlap with the home customer; earlier cutbacks had already ended Taste editorial. Fortune (16 Jul 2013) adds that Taste's self-described luxury high-end food model "didn't work," editorial traffic did not translate into high sales, and low food margins drove the 2012 cutbacks.
Gilt said Taste customers predominately shopped during peak holiday times, so gourmet SKUs moved to seasonal Home sales.
Taste's luxury high-end food-at-high-prices model did not work versus Gilt's flash-sale core.
cited notoriously low food margins as the reason Gilt gave when cutting Taste offerings in September 2012.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Product or service closed
parent Gilt Groupe email and rep confirmed Gilt Taste would cease to exist on 24 May 2013; gourmet products moved into Gilt Home on a seasonal basis (parent unit shutdown).
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
In September 2012 Gilt Groupe cut back Gilt Taste as part of a restructuring to shed unprofitable businesses ahead of a planned IPO; the vertical was scaled down to about four employees.
- 02
Gilt Taste had not achieved the growth expected and was wound down as a standalone offering.
- 03
Parent Gilt Groupe was later acquired by Hudson's Bay Company for $250 million in 2016; no standalone financial figures for Gilt Taste were publicly disclosed.