Photo: STORD
STORD, an Atlanta-based warehousing and distribution technology company, announced it raised $12.3 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins. Existing investors Susa Ventures and Dynamo also participated in this round. Including this round, STORD has raised $15 million. Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman is also joining the company’s board.
The STORD team believes that shippers should have better distribution experiences. And these experiences should be agile rather than rigid and automated instead of manual. In the last year, STORD’s revenue grew roughly 10x and the company expanded its team from 5 employees in a small co-working space to 30 people in a headquarters location in the heart of Atlanta’s technology community. Now STORD moves over $200 million of product every month and this figure is rapidly growing.
“In conjunction with this round, we are announcing our new model and a new category of distribution — Networked Distribution — which will further our mission to empower modern shippers to move products brilliantly,” said STORD founder and CEO Sean Henry in a blog post. “Combining technology and data, a vast network of 3PLs, and high-touch support and logistics expertise — all managed through a software interface — Networked Distribution gives shippers a central hub with one network, one platform, and one partner to simplify all warehousing and transportation.”
Henry and co-founder and CTO Jacob Boudreau both were recently named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Manufacturing and Industry and STORD was named a Kairos Society’s Kairos K50 company. They also participated in the Dynamo Accelerator program.
With this funding round, STORD is going to expand on its warehouse network, transportation centers, and distribution facilities. And STORD is also going to hire more than 50 employees before 2020.
STORD is partners with one of the largest beverage companies in America. That company has more than 20 different 3PLs across the country to manage — which increases last-mile costs and fluctuating demand from customers so distribution was a constant challenge. Using STORD, the company was able to eliminate the need to manage the 3PLs as the company met their warehousing and transportation needs through a single network and increased speed-to-market.
“Modern consumer expectations for same day delivery are changing how products move around the world. From ocean freight to air freight, to trucking and warehousing, each piece of this global supply chain is continuously growing and being reinvented,” added Fushman. “Today’s nearly $150 billion U.S. warehousing market is also showing no sign of a slow down as merchants turn to third-party logistics (3PLs) providers in the hope they can flexibly scale up their infrastructure to get the right products into the hands of consumers, wherever they are, on time.”
