Gap Drops Piperlime to Focus on Fixing its Major Brands

Gap is dropping its small Piperlime online brand so the apparel maker and retailer can focus on fixing the problems bedeviling its much bigger namesake and Banana Republic brands. Piperlime, which Gap founded in 2006 as a rival to Amazon.com's Zappos.com, sold shoes, clothing and accessories via e-commerce and through a store in New York's SoHo district. But it never caught on with a wide audience beyond its core, dedicated customers, and its revenues never topped $100 million, a drop in the bucket for a company with annual sales exceeding $16 billion.