Amazon, Drugstore.com In Pact
Amazon.com and drugstore.com have announced a multi-million dollar agreement to integrate shopping features and create a drugstore.com shopping "tab"at Amazon.com. Under the agreement, Amazon.com will receive $105 million over three years.
In exchange, Amazon.com will make an additional $30 million investment in drugstore.com, bringing its total stake to nearly 28% of the outstanding drugstore.com common stock, upon closing of the transaction.
The agreement means that soon--for the first time--an Amazon.com investment partner will be prominently featured on Amazon.com as a permanent part of Amazon.com's regular navigational structure. Other features aimed at making shopping easier--Amazon's patented one-click shopping, a shared shopping basket, and more integrated search and browse capabilities --are planned.
"We're working to make Amazon.com the only place where you can find anything and everything you might want to buy online -- what you're seeing today is a completely new component of that strategy,'' says Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "We chose drugstore.com to be our first partner with this level of tight integration because they obsess over customers the way we do, and we expect more arrangements like this when it makes sense for customers.''
Amazon.com originally acquired a minority stake in drugstore.com in August 1998. In the past, it has introduced drugstore.com to its customers by offering temporary links on the Amazon.com home page and by distributing drugstore.com gift certificates to Amazon.com customers.
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