- ShipMonk — a leading provider of e-commerce fulfillment and technology solutions — announced it has raised a $290 million growth equity round led by Summit Partners
ShipMonk — a leading provider of e-commerce fulfillment and technology solutions — announced it has raised a $290 million growth equity round led by Summit Partners. This round of funding represents a minority stake in the business and it will help further accelerate ShipMonk’s rapid growth through continued investment in R&D, hiring, the development of B2B fulfillment capabilities, and international expansion. Plus the company also revealed that it added Summit Partners’ Managing Director Christopher Dean and Vice President Chelsea Jurman to its Board of Directors.
The company’s inventory management software, automation technology, and multi-channel order fulfillment solutions are designed for helping growing businesses scale more quickly and compete with larger and more established brands.
Since the company was founded in 2014, ShipMonk has delivered on this mission and grown rapidly and profitably as a result. And in 2020, the company will generate more than $140 million in revenues, representing growth of more than 100% over the prior year. This growth was fueled by continued acceleration in customers’ online sales. Last month, ShipMonk’s customers saw an additional surge in online volume, representing 115% more fulfilled orders than the same time period in 2019, and the momentum has sustained as the holiday season has progressed.
ShipMonk’s proprietary e-commerce management platform was designed to free growing online businesses from the hassle and time-intensive process of managing backend logistics. And its API integrations sync with leading shopping cart and marketplace platforms like Shopify to automatically import orders across every sales channel and support a seamless and quick fulfillment experience. And orders are processed at ShipMonk’s U.S. warehouse locations strategically located throughout the United States to facilitate fast delivery of products to customers. The highly automated warehouse operations help ShipMonk’s customers save up to 50% of the operational costs compared to doing fulfillment in house and provide a scalable solution for hyper-growth.
ShipMonk’s customer base has doubled over the past 12 months and now the company serves more than 1,000 e-commerce businesses, including BrüMate, Liquid IV, Cuts Clothing, FEAT and CatLadyBox. ShipMonk’s customer base has benefited from the ongoing shift to online purchasing, and amidst further COVID-accelerated growth, the company helped its merchants to keep a steady delivery stream, maintaining shipping and delivery timeframes and eliminating delays.
ShipMonk was founded by CEO Jan Bednar to help address a personal pain point. Bednar had immigrated to the U.S. from the Czech Republic at 17 years old to play hockey and attend Florida Atlantic University. At the time, most e-commerce brands would not ship internationally, and he consistently faced a challenge when sending American products to friends and family back home. From this initial idea, he pivoted ShipMonk to focus on the growing fulfillment needs of DTC brands. The company’s initial funding came from Bednar’s prize winnings from collegiate and venture business competitions, and the company has scaled rapidly, and profitably, since its inception.
Now ShipMonk serves a growing base of B2C and B2B businesses from its Fort Lauderdale, FL headquarters and warehouse facilities across the U.S. And the company plans to open its flagship European fulfillment center in the Czech Republic in mid-2021. ShipMonk currently has 1,000 employees and intends to increase headcount to 1,500 over the next 12 months.
KEY QUOTES:
“ShipMonk was founded to alleviate the burden of supply chain management and allow brand owners to focus on the magic of their front-end customer experience. Small and medium-sized brands are working at an incredible pace to keep up with both increased demand and consumers’ service-level expectations. Fulfillment and inventory management technology has quickly become a critical component to ensure seamless delivery. Our solutions can quite literally make the difference between an item arriving on time or behind schedule, and ultimately, the difference between building brand loyalty or losing a valuable customer.”
— ShipMonk Founder and CEO Jan Bednar
“We believe ShipMonk truly demonstrates the power of a bootstrapped, durable growth mindset. Jan identified a significant gap in the market and, together with the ShipMonk team, has scaled the business in a deliberate and capital efficient manner to address that need. The results have been impressive. ShipMonk is helping e-commerce brands of all sizes compete against larger, more established players – helping even the smallest of brands to meet the expectations of today’s consumers.”
— Christopher Dean, a Managing Director at Summit Partners — who will join the ShipMonk Board of Directors
“ShipMonk without question enabled us to both survive and thrive through 2020. We couldn’t have foreseen this year’s increased demand, but because ShipMonk was running our fulfillment, we were able to meet, and even exceed, expectations and our customers never saw us sweat.”
— Dylan Jacob, Founder, BrüMate (an insulated drinkware brand)
