[ad_1]
With new investments of $ 40 million announced Thursday, Chicago-based e-commerce logistics company ShipBob is planning an expansion, starting with a new distribution warehouse in Cicero and hiring 100 people next year.
The startup is intended to help small and medium-sized e-commerce businesses to ship their products at speeds similar to Amazon's. Dhruv Saxena, co-founder and CEO of ShipBob, said shipping logistics was the hardest part of launching an e-commerce brand.
"The expectation from the customer's point of view is that they will receive all their e-commerce orders like Amazon Prime: the same day, the next day," he said. "These e-commerce companies do not have the infrastructure to meet customer expectations."
ShipBob intends to use its $ 40 million funding to continue to work in this direction and improve its software platform. Its new facility on Ogden Avenue is six times larger than the old Chicago area warehouse. It can facilitate same-day delivery for customers in the Chicago area who order products on the Shopify e-commerce platform.
Other e-commerce companies are also investing in the Chicago area to meet the growing demand of online shoppers.
Rakuten Super Logistics, based in Las Vegas, announced Wednesday that it will open two additional distribution centers, one in New Jersey and the other in the suburbs of McCook, scheduled to open in October. Amazon has also increased its presence in the region and now operates more than half a dozen facilities in Illinois.
In addition to Amazon, there is room in the world of e-commerce, said Sunil Chopra, a professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. To compete with the technology giant and other players, ShipBob will need to leverage its scale to reduce the cost of its services to customers.
"That's the key," he said.
The new Cobar warehouse at ShipBob is about the size of two football fields. The space continues to fill, but the products of at least 1,000 e-commerce companies, including Chicago-based quinoa brand I Heart Keenwah and Chicago-based apparel manufacturer Creepy Co., are already in business. shelves. There are rows of trash cans filled with smaller items, like watchbands and zombie t-shirts, and unpacked box baskets filled with products ranging from socks to order-pending haircuts. Workers move between rows, putting boxes on shelves and sorting pallets. Employees remove the deconstructed boxes from the batteries to pack them.
"There was a time when we knew all the customers and all the products, and that has long since disappeared," co-founder Jivko Bojinov said in the afternoon as he ran through the articles.
In about a year, ShipBob had more than 350 employees, up from 60 for next year. The company's hiring plans for next year are motivated by the opening of new operations centers and the size of its software engineering team.
In addition to Cicero's warehouse, the company operates treatment centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Dallas. ShipBob plans to open in the next few years, and their location will depend on shipping demand, Saxena said.
ShipBob's warehouses depend on its technology platform to function. As orders go through company websites, the technology generates shipping labels to be completed by employees. Workers carry iPod Touch devices on their wrists and finger scanners. The ShipBob app on the iPod tells them what items need to be pulled and they use the scanners to confirm that they've pulled out the right products. The software also facilitates administrative tasks, such as knowing when to restock.
ShipBob's technology then compares shipping prices to determine which carrier to use to deliver packages. Its technology sends tracking information to customers' websites for the consumer, who never sees the ShipBob brand.
A new afternoon, new employee Lashon Giles filled a tissue order for a new potential couch. It was her third week of work, and now that she knew where things were, technology was making things difficult for her, she said. She moved into the aisles and took out color samples like "earth" and "wheat", pointing her finger reader at the QR code in the trash and going on afterwards.
"It's very simple," said Bojinov. Employees provide feedback on how to improve technology – an effort that new funding will help drive. One of the goals is to reduce the number of steps employees must take to make them more effective. Amazon worked for the same purpose.
The e-commerce giant's execution center in the southern suburbs of Monee, for example, employs a fleet of robots alongside its workers, allowing them to process more orders. Amazon has also developed a technology that can follow the movement of the hands of its employees when they fill orders.
With warehouses and the software that helps them operate, ShipBob is expected to grow in a growing industry, "said Ira Weiss, general manager of Hyde Park Venture Partners, one of the company's investors.
"Nobody does exactly what we do," he said. "In six to twelve months, it will be clear to all that we have won the market."
The next challenge that ShipBob will face will continue to execute and manage growth, "said Weiss.
The last round of funding is the fourth, bringing the total to more than $ 62 million. The company has not disclosed its new valuation.
California-based Menlo Ventures led the round and his partner Shawn Carolan will join ShipBob's board of directors. Carolan also contributed to Menlo Ventures' investment in Uber. Other ShipBob recurring investors include Hyde Park Angels, headquartered in Chicago; Bain Capital Ventures, the venture capital subsidiary of Bain Capital based in Palo Alto, California; and Y Combinator, ShipBob's acclaimed California accelerator, was launched four years ago shortly after it was launched.
Twitter @AllyMarotti
[ad_2]
Source link
