Stores.com Emerges from Mercatalyst Rebrand
The e-commerce company formerly known as Mercatalyst has formalized its transformation into Stores.com, Inc. The new corporate identity unifies multiple online retail brands, including MorningSave, Meh, and SideDeal, under a single platform. The Dallas-based company serves over 17 million customers across its properties.
The new Stores.com identity is a strategic move by CEO Matt Rutledge, a familiar name to Amazon executives. Rutledge founded the pioneering daily-deal site Woot in 2004, which featured a single-item-a-day model with irreverent, brutally honest product descriptions. Amazon acquired Woot for a reported $110 million in 2010. Rutledge’s tenure at Amazon was short-lived; he resigned in 2012, stating a preference for building new companies over managing a subsidiary within a large corporation. He later expressed that post-acquisition, Woot became more complex and moved away from its simple, eccentric roots that had cultivated a loyal community. In 2014, Rutledge launched Meh.com, a self-described reboot of the classic daily deal concept, under a parent company cheekily named A Mediocre Corporation. Meh was founded to recapture the original Woot ethos of a fun, community-centric shopping experience where you could visit without any pressure to buy. The Stores.com platform now consolidates Meh with other e-commerce properties developed under the Mercatalyst name. These include MorningSave, which leverages partnerships with daytime television shows for live product showcases, and SideDeal, which targets bargain-hunting communities through affiliate partnerships. This multi-brand portfolio strategy aims to serve distinct audiences through event-driven retail moments.
