When shipping small items, it’s no problem to use services like FedEx or UPS, but what if you have a large, heavy, or unusually shaped item? When you have an item that doesn’t easily fit in a box, you need to work with specialized carriers, but they generally aren’t easy to find or very transparent with their pricing.
ShipHawk wants to take the pain out of shipping those items, with a platform that allows users to get shipping quotes from multiple providers and pick the one that makes the most sense for them. The company just closed on $5 million in new funding to expand its business and get its shipping engine integrated with a wider range of e-commerce platforms.
The new funding was led by DN Capital, with participation from existing investors Karlin Ventures, Rothenberg Ventures, and Wavemaker Partners (formerly Siemer Ventures). Along with the funding, DN Capital managing partner Steve Schlenker is joining the company’s board of directors.
ShipHawk has been around for the last two years or so, and was actually the audience choice winner at Startup Alley during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013. Over the last year-and-a-half, it’s just been improving its service and signing up partners to integrate its shipping API into their own platforms.
For many buyers and sellers on platforms like eBay or Shopify, buying a piece of furniture or other large item can be a guessing game when it comes to the price of shipping. ShipHawk simplifies that process by allowing customers to add the information they have about an item, as well as the origin and destination address, and get a quote from qualified carriers.
The company works with hundreds of shipping partners to get the best quotes for its customers, which they can choose based on price or speed of delivery. It also provides a price guarantee against the quotes provided.
ShipHawk started with a web app that users could manually enter information into, but increasingly it’s working to become the API for shipping prices on third-party e-commerce platforms. Rather than users having to find shipping rates themselves, ShipHawk can enable sales marketplaces to build shipping costs directly into their purchase flow, bringing transparency to both buyers and sellers.
With its Series A round, ShipHawk has raised a total of $6 million in outside funding. The company, which is based in Santa Barbara, Calif., now has 20 employees on board.