What Happened to Pharmapacks? The Full Story of Its Bankruptcy and Quiet Second Life
Pharmapacks was one of the largest sellers on Amazon for roughly a decade, selling health, beauty, and personal care products. In August 2022, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This account draws on SEC filings, the bankruptcy docket, a federal trademark record, and a state court complaint.
TL;DR
Pharmapacks filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on August 28, 2022, after a $1.55B SPAC deal fell through. However, the deeper cause was a business model that never closed the gap between thin resale margins and the cost of running its own fulfillment network. Losses had grown every year since at least 2018, funded by outside capital that dried up once the SPAC market collapsed. Its trademark is now owned by Webb Enterprises LLC, though the registration was cancelled in February 2026, and a separate, much smaller Amazon storefront still sells under the Pharmapacks name today, registered to a different legal entity.
How Pharmapacks Built a $500 Million Amazon Business
Andrew Vagenas owned and operated a retail pharmacy in the Bronx. Around 2010, he and four friends launched Pharmapacks as an online health and beauty retailer, based out of a warehouse in Queens, per a 2016 ABC News profile of Vagenas. The federal trademark record lists a first-use date of April 29, 2010, with first use in commerce in April 2011.
Revenue and losses by year, from the company's SEC-filed proxy statement for its SPAC merger:
By 2016, Pharmapacks was shipping more than 20,000 packages a day and had outgrown a 30,000-square-foot warehouse. The company reached $170 million in sales before raising a $32.5 million Series A round in 2018. The Carlyle Group invested $250 million in November 2020, valuing the company at roughly $1.1 billion.
By September 2021, renamed Packable Holdings, the company announced plans to go public through a merger with Highland Transcend Partners, a special purpose acquisition company, in a deal valuing the combined business at $1.55 billion.
What Happened to Pharmapacks (Rise and Fall)
The company's own investor filings show a business that had been losing money every year since at least 2018, and the losses trace back to how the business itself was built.
They were operating on a reseller model with almost no margin to work with
Pharmapacks bought inventory, health and beauty products from established brands, and competed on price. Software repriced listings roughly every 45 minutes to win Amazon's Buy Box. That approach can move a lot of volume, but it caps how much margin is available, since the product itself isn't proprietary and the main lever is being cheaper than the next seller.
Gross margin sat around 45 percent for four straight years, according to the company's own investor deck. The problem shows up one line down:
| Year | Gross Margin | Selling & Distribution Expense | Warehouse & G&A |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 44% | 44% of revenue | 12% of revenue |
| 2019 | 46% | 48% of revenue | 12% of revenue |
| 2020 | 47% | 50% of revenue | 13% of revenue |
| 2021 | 45% | 52% of revenue | 22% of revenue |
Selling and distribution costs alone matched or exceeded gross margin every single year, before warehouse and administrative costs were even added in. That's the arithmetic behind the operating losses: $23 million in 2018, $35 million in 2019, $61 million in 2020, $112 million in 2021. The losses didn't come from one bad year, they compounded every year the company operated.
Owning fulfillment instead of renting it
Most Amazon resellers use Fulfillment by Amazon and let Amazon absorb the cost of warehousing and shipping. Pharmapacks built and ran its own fulfillment network instead, and operated Seller Fulfilled Prime, a designation few sellers at its scale still used. That gave the company more control over the customer experience, but it also meant carrying warehouse leases, logistics staff, and shipping infrastructure directly on its own books, a heavier, more fixed cost structure than the asset-light model most competitors ran.
No brand to fall back on
Pharmapacks didn't own the products it sold. It had no pricing power beyond being the cheapest listing and nothing to differentiate itself once a competitor undercut a price. That's a structural risk specific to resale businesses: when volume slows or costs rise, there's no brand loyalty or product exclusivity to soften the impact, only thinner margins in the same race to the bottom that built the business in the first place.
Supply chain strain arrived on top of an already thin margin
The company's own 2022 investor materials describe 2021 as a year of “significant inventory out of stock, purchase order delays, and delays in onboarding new customers.” For a business already running on a 45 percent gross margin, that combination is close to the worst case: revenue growth slowed at the same time costs kept climbing, which is exactly what shows up in the 2021 numbers, where selling and distribution expense jumped to 52 percent of revenue and warehouse and G&A nearly doubled as a share of revenue.
Reliance on a single platform
As of 2020, Amazon accounted for 80 percent of Packable's sales. That concentration cuts two ways. It gave the company enormous scale on one channel, but it also meant Amazon's referral fees and policies were baked directly into the cost structure above, with little room to negotiate better terms or diversify away from a single marketplace's economics.
The capital dependency that tied it all together
None of the above sinks a company by itself if there's enough outside money to cover the gap while the business scales toward profitability. That was the plan: the company's own projections targeted near-breakeven operating income by 2023 and $58 million in positive operating income by 2024, a bet that only pays off if losses can be funded until volume catches up. Pharmapacks raised roughly $400 to 500 million across equity and debt financing to make that bet, with a public listing via the Highland Transcend SPAC, valued at $1.55 billion, meant to be the next round of fuel.
When the SPAC market collapsed in early 2022 and that merger fell apart in March, the company lost its next source of capital with no replacement lined up. The losses had been running for years by that point, funded the entire time by the expectation that more capital would keep arriving.
Why Pharmapacks Filed for Bankruptcy: A Timeline of the Final Year
- March 25, 2022 — Packable and Highland Transcend jointly terminate the SPAC merger, citing unfavorable market conditions, per the companies' SEC-filed press release
- April 2022 — Vagenas steps down as CEO, succeeded by Daniel Myers, a Carlyle operating executive
- August 23, 2022 — Company announces layoffs: 138 employees immediately, 372 more to follow
- August 28, 2022 — Packable Holdings and subsidiaries, including Pharmapacks, LLC, file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware, case number 22-10797, before Judge Craig T. Goldblatt
- July 10, 2023 — Docket shows a scheduling order for an omnibus hearing, nearly a year after filing
Vagenas' executive employment agreement, dated January 6, 2022 and filed as an SEC exhibit, lists Pharmapacks, LLC as the operating subsidiary, under parent Packable Holdings, LLC, formerly known as Entourage Commerce, LLC. That naming is also confirmed by the bankruptcy petition. Pharmapacks, LLC was administered as case number 22-10800, a related member case under the lead docket. The debtor entity was later renamed Pack Liquidating, LLC.
Who Owns the Pharmapacks Trademark Now?
The federal registration for the PHARMAPACKS mark, serial number 88263447, is searchable through the USPTO's Trademark Status and Document Retrieval system:
- Current owner: Webb Enterprises LLC, a Delaware-registered company at 1516 Motor Parkway, the same Long Island building tied to every entity in this story
- Ownership timeline: two “assignment not updated automatically” entries on May 19 and June 23, 2022, both before the August 28 bankruptcy filing, followed by an “automatic update of assignment” on January 25, 2023, several months after
- Status today: the registration was cancelled on February 13, 2026, because the registrant did not file a required declaration of continued use
Trademark Status
As of February 2026, the PHARMAPACKS federal trademark registration is cancelled. The Amazon storefront currently using the name is operating without an active federal trademark.
The trademark database shows event labels, not underlying agreements, so the exact sequence of what triggered each ownership update isn't documented beyond the dates themselves.
Jonathan Webb, whose name matches the LLC now holding the mark, appears as Co-Founder and CEO on Packable's current leadership page, alongside Chris Pfeiffer as co-CEO. Packable's Terms of Use page lists the operating entity behind packable.com as “Webb Enterprises LLC dba Packable,” at the same Islandia address. Webb was part of the executive team named in Vagenas's 2021 SPAC announcement.
Is Pharmapacks Still in Business? What's Selling on Amazon Today
The live Amazon seller account trading as “Pharmapacks_” is registered under the business name Pharma Packs Corp, per data from EcomCrew's Seller Snooper tool, at the same 1516 Motor Parkway address, seller ID ASEVS99O6FS73. That's a distinct legal name from Webb Enterprises LLC.
- Estimated annual revenue: roughly $5 million, against $452 million at its peak
- Products sold include Dr. Scholl's insoles, Odor-Eaters, Olay and Cetaphil skincare, Clorox and Lysol cleaning products, and Seventh Generation baby wipes
- The seller platform categorizes the account as “Private Label/D2C”
- Lifetime feedback sits above 1.2 million, and the count has trended downward since late 2024
The Scrub Daddy Lawsuit
A summons and complaint filed September 26, 2022 in Nassau County Supreme Court, index number 612783/2022, names four individuals personally as defendants: Andrew Vagenas, Adam Berkowitz, Bradley Tramunti, and James Mastronardi. Pharmapacks, LLC is not named. The complaint states venue is proper in Nassau County because all four defendants reside there.
This is the most detailed publicly available list of company principals tied to the business at the time of the bankruptcy filing.
Where Are the Pharmapacks Founders Now?
Daniel Myers (CEO during the final months): currently a senior fellow at the University of Tennessee's Haslam College of Business and an operating executive with The Carlyle Group.
Andrew Vagenas (founder): now a founding partner at Auréa Group, a beauty and personal care investment platform, alongside Mike Jatania and Paul Raphael. In 2024, Auréa led the consortium that acquired The Body Shop out of UK administration. Auréa's team page credits him with founding and running Packable for more than sixteen years.
Ian Cohen (general counsel, business strategy): served as General Counsel at Pharmapacks, then Vice President of Business Strategy at Packable, before founding IRC Legal, a fractional general counsel practice, confirmed by his professional history listed across multiple independent sources. He's also since worked at TechGC and The Roebling Group.
Other Amazon Sellers and Aggregators That Have Collapsed
- Thrasio — raised $3.4 billion, peaked near a $10 billion valuation. Filed Chapter 11 in February 2024, eliminated $495 million in debt, emerged about four months later after its CEO and five other senior executives departed. EcomCrew covered the layoffs that preceded the filing.
- Benitago Group — filed for bankruptcy in 2023
- Perch — raised more than $900 million, was acquired by rival aggregator Razor Group rather than filing for bankruptcy
- Kite — backed by Blackstone, shut down
So What's Actually Going On With Pharmapacks Now?
Packable Holdings and Pharmapacks, LLC completed a Chapter 11 liquidation in 2022. Andrew Vagenas is now a partner at a different investment firm. The Pharmapacks trademark is owned by Webb Enterprises LLC, which is tied to Packable insider Jonathan Webb, and that trademark was cancelled in February 2026. A separate Amazon account, registered to Pharma Packs Corp, continues to sell products under the Pharmapacks name at roughly $5 million in estimated annual revenue.
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