Flash sales giant Gilt Groupe is acquiring the troubled daily deals startup BuyWithMe, which recently saw over half its staff laid off after the company failed to raise the funding it needed to survive. Beginning November 1st, BuyWithMe will officially become a part of Gilt, according to a report from BetaBeat, which has been covering the BuyWithMe saga for the past couple of weeks.
The remaining sales staff left at the end of last week’s layoffs (staff who already took at 25% pay cut), will be let go, reports BetaBeat, which has been speaking with current and former BuyWithMe employees about the matter. Gilt will then gain BuyWithMe’s technology, customer email list, merchant partners and a few executives.
Employees questions about unvested stock options were not answered on a company-wide conference last night, says the report.
Gilt Groupe declined to comment on the matter.
BuyWithMe laid off half its workforce last week, after having been unsuccessful in its attempts to buy its way to growth by acquiring other daily deals players. The company made its sixth acquisition in September, with its purchase of San Francisco-based TownHog . It previously acquired NYC’s Scoop St, Chicago deals site DealADayOnline, San Francisco deals site Swoop, loyalty company Edhance, and deals site LocalTwist. It raised $30 million from Bain Capital Ventures and Matrix Partners.
Matrix Partners is also an investor in Gilt.
Update: To be clear, this is not confirmed – so changing to “reportedly” buying in headline. We are hearing the same rumors, though. We’ve also confirmed that Gilt execs have been spotted in BuyWithMe’s New York office interviewing sales people.