The OEM’s sale of the online photo service will be completed before its split in November.
Business Insider and Bloomberg reported on the sale of the online photo printing, storage and sharing service Snapfish to private company District Photo “after years of trying to sell”, according to Business Insider. The amount received for the sale isn’t being reported, but HP originally purchased the company in 2005 for around $300 million (€278 million).
The purchase will take place before October, meaning that it will go through before HP splits in November into HP Enterprise and HP Inc. HP will continue to partner with Snapfish and “sell it the photo printing equipment it needs”, while Business Insider called the business an “oddball unit which made sense for HP back in the days when people really printed a lot of photos”.
HP had reportedly been close to selling the unit in September, but private equity firms interested “decided to pass”, and Snapfish employees complained online that it was “being neglected by HP”. No press releases or content relating to Snapfish had been posted since 2012, with one employee commenting that “this place has gone downhill […] lots of politics and bad management behaviour […] lack of business strategy and direction. Also, HP no longer cares.
“No one is really happy except the management maybe, and at this point it is all about getting a paycheque while looking for opportunities. No wonder the employee count is really dwindling”. The company is still being run by founder Manas Chaliha, according to HP, who will move to District Photo when the acquisition is finalised.
Snapfish reportedly currently employs around 400 staff, though HP “would not confirm the number of employees impacted”. Bloomberg noted that CEO Meg Whitman told shareholders that the OEM “was on track to […] become more responsive to corporate customers”, with the sale of such units allowing it to focus on the split.