When consumers switched to home deliveries and “digitized” their lifestyles during the pandemic, it led to a surge in e-commerce sales and thus, also, in the need for warehousing and shipping. But of course, most e-commerce businesses outsource this function. Amazon’s “Fulfilled By Amazon” (FBA) service has boomed on its own platform, but if you’re selling on eBay or Shopify it’s an expensive option, hence the need for alternatives.
ShipBob has raised a total of $330.5 million to meet that demand; ShipMonk $365 million; Flowspace $46.5 million; and everstox out of Germany €23 million. In the U.K., we covered how Huboo had become the upstart against FBA back in 2021 when it raised an $81 million Series B financing led by U.S.-based Mubadala Capital.
It has now raised a further £29 million ($36.6 million) from existing investors including Ada Ventures and Maersk. There’s also been further, unspecified, debt investment from HSBC and Blackrock. This means it’s now raised a total on £122 million ($154 million) in equity.
Martin Bysh, CEO and co-founder, said in a statement that the firm had managed to raise the round “despite a poor macro outlook for eCommerce.” Founded by Bysh and CIO Paul Dodd in 2017, Huboo now has 10 warehouses across Europe and integrates with sales from TikTok, Amazon, eBay and Shopify, among others. As well as the U.K., the Bristol-based company also covers the Netherlands, France, Spain and Germany. Early-stage investors in Huboo included Stride, Ada Ventures, Hearst, Episode 1 and Maersk Growth.
The race to deliver e-commerce fulfilment cost-effectively has only become more relevant now that consumers are so used to on-demand services, post-pandemic. Fully integrated logistics, linked with full-stack software, appears to have become the key to success for these kinds of startups.