Blue Nile has changed substantially since it became a private company two years ago, and another big shift — a return to the public markets — could be on the horizon, GeekWire reports.
Since Bain Capital Private Equity and Bow Street LLC bought the company for $500 million, it has reconfigured its management team, adding former Target executive Jason Goldberger as CEO, among other hires.
Blue Nile has also increased its revenue by $100 million a year, to $500 million. It’s also hired about 100 people and now has an employee base of 500.
It’s quite possible the company will become publicly traded again in the near future, GeekWire reports.
Blue Nile CFO Bill Koefoed said, “Our expectation is that we will tap back into the public markets, probably not in 2019, but if we continue to execute on our journey, I think you could see it happening some time after that.”
One thing the e-commerce retailer doesn’t plan to do in 2019 is open more brick-and-mortar stores. It has six of them across the country at present; they’re actually showroom locations where you can check out, but not buy, merchandise.
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Koefoed said the company is “continuing to look to explore what a future omni-channel presence will look like going into the future.”
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Retiring? Let Wilkerson Do the Heavy Lifting
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