Just five weeks after shutting down operations, SimonDelivers.com is under new ownership, has a new name and will soon be taking orders again online.
The assets of the company have been purchased for an undisclosed amount by Coborn’s Inc., which operates in the upper Midwest under brands such as Coborn's, Cash Wise, Holiday Stationstore, Little Duke's and Save-A-Lot Food stores. The company, based in St. Cloud, MN, has annual sales of more than $850 million, according to Hoovers.com, a corporate research site.
Going forward, SimonDelivers.com will be known as CobornsDelivers.com and will begin operations in October in Minneapolis and St. Paul, says a Coborn’s spokesman. The company has no immediate plans to make CobornsDelivers.com a bigger brand that competes with other national web grocers such as Peadpod.com, the spokesman says.
SimonDelivers.com, No. 168 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, succumbed to cost pressure and waning customer interest and ended operations at the end of July. The company began serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in 1999 and was an early retailer of online groceries, using a central warehouse location and contracting with local farmers for produce. During its span of business, SimonDelivers.com delivered about four million orders to about 180,000 customers.
The SimonDelivers.com franchise will benefit from Coborn’s greater operating economies of scale, the spokesman says. Coborn’s operates its own bakery, distribution center and central commissary. “This new online initiative will benefit from our centralized organization,” the spokesman says.
Coborn’s isn’t a newcomer to online grocery retailing, although the company has been operating on a very small scale, the spokesman says. “We’ve been offering a web-based home delivery option in about seven of our stores for quite some time,” he says. When CobornsDelivers.com goes live, customers will be able to reactivate their account and access their shopping histories, the spokesman says.
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