The rights to Casa.com (Spanish for 'house') have been transferred to Amazon, indicating the ecommerce giant's next dedicated vertical shop may be a home decor site. Amazon's Quidsi (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/quidsi) network of sites already runs diapers.com for baby goods, wag.com for pets, beautybar.com for — well, you get it. If you visit Casa.com (http://casa.com/) now you'll find more evidence, with a blank screen explaining "You have reached an invalid location. Maybe you are looking for http://www.diapers.com, http://www.soap.com..." Casa.com could offer a more affordable, traditional home decor shopping alternative to luxury and flash sales sites like One Kings Lane (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/one-kings-lane) and Gilt's Decorati (http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/23/gilt-groupe-acquires-interior-design-community-decorati/).
Domain Name Wire (http://domainnamewire.com/2012/01/06/amazons-quidsi-appears-to-be-working-on-casa-com/) first reported on the domain switch, noting that casa.com was protected by whois privacy for years prior to the transfer. Also, I found that Quidsi employee Morgan C. lists herself on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=151171335) as a "Merchandising Associate at Quidsi Inc., Casa.com", and Domain Name Wire spotted another Quidsi employee (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jose-a-morel/11/5a4/6ab) with the same title. You won't find that logo above anywhere else though, it's just a mockup I concocted.
Amazon bought Diapers.com parent Quidsi (http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/confirmed-amazon-spends-545-million-on-diapers-com-parent-quidsi/) for $545 million in November 2010. When Quidsi launched Yoyo.com for toys (http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/20/after-pets-diapers-and-soap-amazons-quidsi-tackles-toys-with-retail-site-yoyo/) in September 2011, it's CEO Marc Lore told TechCrunch that the company's next vertical site was going to continue its focus its core demographic of moms. Casa.com fits that bill perfectly.
The new one-stop shop could include standard Quidsi features such as a combined shopping cart with other Quidsi sites, free 2-day shipping for purchases over $50, seasonal product selections, and featured picks by the site's team. Considering One Kings Lane was expected to do $100 million (http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/20/home-decor-flash-sales-site-one-kings-lane-nabs-former-ebay-exec-as-cfo/) in 2011 sales, the home decor market could be a huge opportunity for Amazon.
[Image Credit: Shutterstock (http://www.shutterstock.com/index-in.mhtml)]
TechCrunch