Packable, parent of top Amazon seller Pharmapacks, liquidated after SPAC deal collapsed

Pharmapacks began in 2010 as a single Bronx pharmacy and rode Amazon's marketplace to become the No. 1 third-party seller in the US by September 2021. Its parent, Packable — backed by Carlyle Group, Fidelity and Lugard Road Capital — sold health, personal care and beauty products across Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Target, but by its own investor presentation Amazon took 80% of sales as of 2020.

In September 2021 Packable agreed to go public through a SPAC merger with Highland Transcend Partners I Corp at a $1.55 billion valuation. Then the window shut: by July 2022 not a single new SPAC was issued, by CNBC's count of SPAC Research data. Packable called off the deal in March 2022 citing 'unfavorable market conditions', days before the shell company's shareholder meeting, and CEO Andrew Vagenas quietly resigned in April, succeeded by former Mondelez supply chain executive Daniel Myers.

Growth had already stalled beneath the boom: supply-chain constraints 'resulted in significant inventory out of stock, purchase order delays, and delays in onboarding new customers', per an investor presentation. Having failed to find new financing, Packable told staff in August 2022 it was laying off 138 people — about 20% of staff — with the remaining 372 to be terminated as wind-down duties completed: 'no viable financing alternatives' left it 'forced to cease operations, liquidate any remaining collateral, and shut down the business'.

Liquidation and ~510 jobs; a $1.55 billion valuation wiped out with Carlyle, Fidelity and Lugard Road Capital as backers

It bet the company's future on a SPAC listing timed to the hottest part of the market, with no plan B when the window closed.

80% of revenue ran through one marketplace, so its fate was tied to a platform whose fees and algorithms it did not control.

Pandemic-era growth hid operational fragility: stockouts and supplier delays ate the momentum the valuation relied on.

When financing dried up there was no cash cushion and no alternative lender — a decade of growth had produced no survivable core.

A boom can finance your growth and still leave you with no business when it ends. One marketplace for 80% of sales plus one financing window is two single points of failure back to back.

Packable ceased operations in August 2022, ending a seller that weeks earlier still ranked fifth among US Amazon sellers per Marketplace Pulse, down from No. 1 a year before. Roughly 510 employees lost their jobs across the two rounds. The collapse became one of the clearest casualties of the SPAC bust — and of an Amazon-seller boom that assumed cheap capital and a single distribution channel would both last forever.