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Zulily

E-commerce / flash salesUSA
New to Unitard
💀 Dead / Bankrupt
Peak $2.6 BillionToday
~-100%
from peak
  1. 🦄
    Became a unicorn
    2013
  2. 📈
    Peak valuation
    $2.6 Billion ’13
  3. 💔
    Became a Unitard
    2023
  4. 💸
    Last valuation
    Wiped out
Capital raised
$139M
Total raised
$28K/day
Raised per day

Total raised averaged per day over approximately 13.6 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology

Funding: Tracxn / Crunchbase
Current status
Ceased operations and liquidated (Dec 2023) via an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors, after a 2015 sale to QVC/Liberty and a 2023 sale to Regent.

The rise & fall

8 moments · 2009–2024

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2009
Founded in Seattle
Mark Vadon and Darrell Cavens, fresh off Blue Nile, build a flash-sale site pitching daily deals to moms.
Fast Company
Nov 2013
IPO at $2.6B — the hottest e-commerce debut of its era$2.6B
Goes public in November 2013 and the stock soars from there; flash sales look unstoppable.
SEC filing
2014–15
Slow shipping, fast Amazon
The deal-of-the-day model and weeks-long shipping lose ground to Prime; growth stalls and the stock slides.
Fast Company
2015
QVC's parent buys it for $2.4B$2.4B
Liberty takes it off the public market below its IPO price — and growth keeps fading inside Qurate.
SEC filing
May 2023
Qurate hands it to Regent
The fading brand is sold to a private-equity firm known for buying distressed retail names.
Fast Company
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2023
Glassdoor reviews chart the slide in brutal detail: employees counted five layoff rounds, and the mid-2023 cuts came with 15 minutes' notice — no severance, no PTO payout, health coverage lapsing within weeks. Staff told the shutdown would come in February were let go before Christmas.
Dec 2023
Liquidation — joins the Unitard Club 💔
Ceases operations via an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors — the quiet way out, ten years after the $2.6B IPO.
Fast Company
2024
The name sells for scraps
Beyond Inc. picks up the Zulily brand out of the wreckage and relaunches it — a shadow of the original.
Reuters
$2.6Bof peak value erased · 14 years

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Zulily was a flash-sale site pitching daily deals to moms and one of its era's hottest IPOs, going public in November 2013 at about $2.6B. Its deal-of-the-day model and slow shipping lost ground to Amazon; QVC parent Liberty bought it for $2.4B in 2015, growth kept fading, and Qurate sold it to private-equity firm Regent in May 2023 before Zulily liquidated that December. Vendors reported unpaid invoices, and staff told the shutdown would come in February were let go before Christmas.

Source: Fast Company / SEC / Grokipedia (~$2.6B IPO valuation Nov 2013, stock soared post-IPO; acquired by Liberty Interactive/QVC for $2.4B 2015; sold to Regent by Qurate May 2023; liquidated via ABC Dec 2023)

Where they went

  • Darrell Cavens
    Co-founder & CEO (2009-2018, IPO/peak era)
    Member Board of Directors at Match Group
    LinkedIn ↗
  • Mark Vadon
    co-founder & chairman (previously founded Blue Nile)
    Retired entrepreneur
    LinkedIn ↗

Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-21. See our methodology.

Disclosed investors (8)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard

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