Articles and News

San Francisco, CA—Online giant eBay has agreed to buy GSI Commerce, a King of Prussia, PA-based company that provides a wide range of e-commerce operations and digital marketing services for clients ranging from sports leagues and teams, branded merchandise manufacturers, retailers (including a number of jewelers), and entertainment and media companies. The move will intensify eBay’s competition with Amazon.com. Like Amazon, GSI has infrastructure in place to help scores of retailers and other merchants with their online business.

Presently, GSI assists more than 180 top brands and retailers with their websites, including Aéropostale, Timberland, Mattel, Zales, Major League Baseball, and TJX Co, which operates both the Marshalls and TJ Maxx discount brands (both of which have sterling silver jewelry in-store and some have fine jewelry).

With the deal, eBay gets an order-management, fulfillment and shipping business that competes directly with Amazon's own fulfillment offering for merchants, says The Wall Street Journal. Fulfillment centers pack up orders for shipment.

As part of the deal, eBay will divest GSI’s sports merchandise business and 70% of both its ShopRunner free shipping site and its Rue La La private-sale fashion shopping site, which often features high-end fine jewelry. Those assets will be sold to a new holding company led by GSI founder and CEO Michael Rubin; eBay will keep a 30% stake in both ShopRunner and Rue La La.

Read more in the Philadelphia Business Journal,  Forbes.com, and in The Wall Street Journal.