Adornis.com, the online jewellers co-founded by Galway-based entrepreneur, Mr Declan Ganley, has gone offline and laid off staff.

The company has laid off several members of the management team at Adornis.com including its president and chief executive, Ms Jeanne Daniels and Mr Roy Albers, vice-president of jewellery operations.

News reports in the United States quoted Ms Daniels as saying that all Adornis employees had been laid off and that the firm was now in the hands of the Ganley Group. She said the reason for the closure was that the company's investors had not been able to secure capital to continue.

Contacted by The Irish Times last night, Mr Ganley denied that Adornis.com had shut down. He said the Ganley Group was investing heavily in a restructuring plan to increase margins at the jewellers. He said the company's website, which has been offline for more than two weeks, was being transferred from one technical platform to a new platform provided by another Ganley partner company.

He said the revamped website www.adornis.com would be back up and running within several weeks.

Adornis is 40 per cent owned by companies within the Ganley Group and it is understood a team from Ireland visited the US operation in the past few weeks to review operations.

The luxury goods conglomerate Compagnie Financiere Richemont also owns a 20 per cent stake.

The difficulties at Adornis.com follow several high profile failures among busienss-to-consumer Internet companies. This week Furniture.com, a Massachusetts-based on-line furniture and home furnishings retailer, and Pets.com, the online pet product store, were the latest Internet firms to announce closure.