Walgreens Shutting Down drugstore.com, Beauty.com

Walgreens announced yesterday that it will shut down drugstore.com, the Bellevue, Wash.-based distributor of drugs, vitamins, and beauty products that traces its roots to the early days of the e-commerce revolution. In addition, Walgreens announced that Beauty.com, another of its subsidiaries, will be shut down. Both sites are expected to be offline by the end of September.

Total Retail's Take: Walgreens is making these moves to focus its attention on Walgreens.com, in which it has invested a lot of resources to improve the omnichannel capabilities it can offer. Yet the news still comes as a surprise considering that Walgreens paid $429 million just five years ago to acquire drugstore.com. I guess $430 million no longer gets you what it used to.