Jeff Bezos may be the greatest deliveryman in history: He made shipping a delight through world-class logistics and Amazon Prime.
But earlier this week, shipping services startup Shippo raised $45m (at a $495m valuation) in an attempt to give SMBs the very same power of Prime.
“The goal is to set a new bar for SMB shipping for everyone who’s not Amazon…”
… explained Shippo CEO Laura Behrens Wu in a blog post. Shippo offers merchants access to tools that help deliver best in class shipping speed, infrastructure, and consumer experiences.
Today, Shippo works with 70k ecommerce businesses and counts 80 shipping carriers as partners.
In 2020, Shippo’s gross postage volume (GPV) wasn’t gross at all; the company shipped $12B+ in product and doubled its GPV — which, according to TechCrunch, reportedly tracks with revenue.
Riding the ecommerce wave
Last year, Shippo grew more than 3x faster than the US ecommerce shipping market, which itself grew more in Q2 2020 than the previous 5 years combined.
Ecommerce spending reached $245B in Q4 2020, up 32.1% year-over-year. Good ol’ USPS saw Q4 package sales increase 42% to $2.8B, and volume increase 435m to ~2.2B.
And if you like small businesses, you’ll like this: In Q4, UPS saw SMB volume grow 28.5%, outpacing larger customers whose volumes grew 4%.
