. Still, it was losing money from high shipping costs and was plagued with quality problems, according to a report from The Information. It had tried increasing prices to $9 on some products, but it wasn’t enough. SoftBank had set up its investment in Brandless so that it would only deliver all of the cash when certain markers were hit. It never in... See more

Said differently, if your business is standalone e-commerce selling third-party brands, good luck. You can’t generate enough operating profit to scale beyond getting noticed, counter-attacked, and at best acquired.