Dive Brief:

• Hilco Streambank, an advisory firm specializing in the sale of intangibles like intellectual property, is selling off assets of Bluefly.com, including its domain name, trademarks, customer data and purchase data, and its Facebook social media profile.

• Bluefly is among the oldest online apparel retailers, founded in 1998 even as that era's dot-com bust was looming. But it has kept up over the years in mobile and with experiments in gamification and blockchain.

• Offers are due to Hilco Streambank on May 6, and an auction will be held on May 8, according to a Hilco press release.

Dive Insight:

Bluefly was once a popular place to find name-brand fashion, and Hilco Streambank Senior Vice President Richelle Kalnit in a statement said that remains especially true for Generation X and millennial customers.

"The Bluefly.com brand is well-recognized by women of all ages, with a high concentration among Generation X and millennial customers, a highly loyal and desirable demographic," Kalnit said.

Its original flash sale concept, which caught fire around the time of the Great Recession as cash-strapped consumers left brands with piles of unsold merchandise, swiftly lost favor as shoppers recovered and fashion labels had less inventory to unload.

But apparel sales have grown online, and Bluefly's current marketplace model is doing well elsewhere. Farfetch, Amazon and even Target have embraced the marketplace as a way to expand their assortments without carrying inventory. That is a selling point, too, Hilco said in its release.

"There is an exciting opportunity to relaunch the brand and reengage with the Bluefly.com customer," Kalnit said.