After years of trying to sell Snapfish, HP finally finds a buyer

HP isn't reporting how much it received for Snapfish, the online photo printing/storage/sharing service it purchased in 2005 for $300 million.

But after years of trying to sell it, the company has finally found a buyer, HP said this morning: a private company called District Photo, who will complete the purchase by October before HP splits into two.

Snapfish had been an oddball unit which made sense for HP back in the days when people really printed a lot of photos. But today consumers tend to share them online. The company says it will maintain a partnership with Snapfish, and sell it the photo printing equipment it needs.

People have been talking about HP selling it since at least 2013, when HP reported in an SEC document that the company was activity looking to shed some business units.

Back in September, Reuters reported that HP was close to a deal but a month later Bloomberg reported that the private equity firms taking a look-see decided to pass.

In the meantime, employees complained on Glassdoor that the company was being neglected by HP and, we can see some evidence of that. The company hasn't posted a press release to its website about its products or anything since 2012.

Snapfish was still being run by one of its founders, Manas Chaliha, according to the company website and his LinkedIn profile. As one employee put it:

Was great, but now this place has gone DOWNHILL ... Lots of politics and bad management behavior. ... Lack of business strategy and direction. Also HP no longer cares. No one is really happy except the management may be and at this point it is all about getting a paycheck while looking for opportunities. No wonder the employee count is really dwindling ...

We won't be surprised to hear that HP divests itself of other older or oddball business units as it prepares to separate, but this was the one that people had been wondering about for a long time.

We've reached out to HP to ask for further comment and will update this post if we hear back.