- SimonDelivers
SimonDelivers, Inc. was an
online grocery that primarily served theMinneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area ofMinnesota , Rochester, Forest Lake, New Prague, Belle Plaine and Jordan, MN and western Wisconsin cities such as Hudson, New Richmond and River Falls. Founded in 1999, it was one example of a company that successfully weathered the dot-com boom and bust at the turn of the twenty first century, in contrast to the famous "dot-bomb" groceryWebvan which was created around the same time but went out of business in 2001. SimonDelivers also had a financially difficult period that year, but secured $15 million in funding and had focused on developing the local market rather than expanding to other areas of theUnited States .The company's name comes from that of founder Simon Foster. In January 2006, SimonDelivers surpassed three million orders. In 2005, the company began delivering to
apartment s andcondominium s. As of 2005, the company operated seventy four delivery vehicles (each painted bright yellow with a large logo on the side) from two distribution centers, one inNew Hope, Minnesota , and one inInver Grove Heights, Minnesota .On July 15, 2008, SimonDelivers announced via email to its customers that it was suspending operations within the next two weeks. President Liwanag Ojala cited increased food and fuel prices as factors in this decision. But the real reason was that the company had never made any money, business had dropped off in the last two years, and it had spent its remaining cash and could not get any one to put new funds into the money losing business.
On July 21, 2008, SimonDelivers announced on its website that it was closed and no longer accepting customer orders.
On August 26, 2008, St. Cloud, MN-based grocery retailer, Coborn’s Incorporated, announced it had acquired and will reopen SimonDelivers as CobornsDelivers beginning in October 2008.
External links
* [http://www.simondelivers.com/ SimonDelivers]
References
*cite web|author=Keith Regan|year=
2001-08-15 |url=http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/12774.html|title=Faith in E-Commerce Hard to Kill|work=E-Commerce Times|accessdate=2006-02-20
*cite web|author=Jake Weyer|year=2008-07-16 |url= http://www.downtownjournal.com/index.php?&story=11957&page=65&category=54|title=SimonDelivers calls it quits |work=Downtown Journal|accessdate=2008-06-19
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