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Mission
Quidsi's mission is to inspire passion in our customers by making life a little easier. We do this by aiming to offer the best selection of products, lightning-fast delivery, incredible customer service, plus an enjoyable and easy-to-navigate shopping experience. We're always looking for new ways to wow, surprise and delight our customers.
Meeting in the 5th grade at the tiny Ranney School in the heart of Bruce Springsteen, Jersey Shore land, Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara begin what would appear to be an ordinary childhood friendship. Fast forward 30 years (past their college semester abroad in Sweden, their roommate years in Manhattan, their roles as best men at each other's wedding and the sale of their first venture to the Topps Company), and the best friends decide to launch an online diaper business.
It all began back in 2005 with a simple idea: to make the busy — and sometimes chaotic — lives of new parents a bit easier by delivering low priced baby essentials really fast with great customer service. And if they could accomplish this better than anyone else, then they'd use this same value proposition to sell other items to their loyal, trusting customers.
Shortly thereafter, Marc and Vinit purchased the domain name and telephone number for 1800DIAPERS. They worked nights and weekends and enlisted a friend with her own family to answer customer calls and fulfill orders from her suburban garage. But there was one huge obstacle: most major manufacturers wouldn't sell their products to a start-up. So using their personal credit cards, they rented trucks and headed to BJ's and Costco stores up and down the Eastern Seaboard to buy diapers, wipes and formula in bulk.
In 2006, Marc and Vinit opened a formal office in Montclair, New Jersey, and the following year, hired their first full-time employee. Soon they added high margin items like gear, clothing and furniture to their assortment and re-branded the site Diapers.com. By its fourth year, the company's revenue grew to $181 million, and Diapers.com became the fastest-growing e-commerce company in the U.S.
In order to deliver on the promise of fast, free shipping and low prices, Diapers.com opened its own warehouses across the country and invested in proprietary technology and systems that dramatically increased productivity and efficiency. Marc and Vinit even hired a "rocket scientist" to help them develop a software system that optimizes order-to-box size to reduce shipping costs.
Throughout this growth period and their emphasis on back-end logistics, the team never lost focus on the customer, that busy parent. In fact, they assembled an award-winning, in-house service team empowered to do whatever it takes to WOW the customer.
In a few short years, Diapers.com established a strong customer base of nearly one million parents. It soon became clear that many of these folks wanted the company to expand their product offering — beyond baby items. The team knew that the operational systems that made Diapers.com so efficient could also be leveraged to support new specialty sites, offering many other product assortments.
By 2009, the company was renamed Quidsi (meaning "what if" in Latin) to serve as an umbrella for all its sites. In no time, Quidsi had added Soap.com for health, beauty and household essentials; BeautyBar.com, a luxury beauty destination; Wag.com, a pet specialty site; YoYo.com for toys and games; Casa.com for décor and home products; VineMarket.com for natural and organic groceries; AfterSchool.com for kids' sports and activities; Bookworm.com for children's books; and Look.com for kids'clothing. Customers now had a seamless way to shop for everything they needed with one shared cart and easy checkout.
Seattle-based Amazon purchased Quidsi in 2011, although the company operates independently out of New Jersey. Here's an idea of how far the company has come in such a short span of time: In 2006, Quidsi had two employees... in 2013, it will have more than a thousand. Quidsi continues to focus on customers and explore the next big thing, always asking, "What if?"