ATLANTA, Aug. 4, 2021 -- Today, STORD, the pioneer of the Cloud Supply Chain and a leader in end-to-end logistics services and technology, announced the launch of a new warehouse and innovation center in Atlanta. The 386,000 square foot facility will integrate state-of-the-art robotics and automation technology, provide additional capacity for warehousing and fulfillment services in a top five market, and bring hundreds of new jobs to the Atlanta area over the next two years. Additionally, STORD will use the facility to test new technologies and processes with the goal of sharing supply chain innovations across its national network of hundreds of warehouse partners.
"STORD is on a mission to democratize the commerce supply chain by giving growing businesses access to Prime-like end-to-end logistics capabilities," said Sean Henry, CEO and co-founder of STORD. "This warehouse and innovation center will improve the physical supply chain experience for our customers while also creating best practices to further optimize the hundreds of warehouses within our partner network. This means continuous improvement, greater efficiency, and ultimately even greater service for all of STORD's stakeholders."
The new fulfillment center comes after STORD grew revenues by more than 300 percent during the last year, driven by demand for its supply chain services and technology. Global e-commerce will surpass $5 trillion in 2021, while B2B online commerce is expected to reach $20.9 trillion by 2027. Increasingly, companies, like Schneider Electric and Dollar General, are turning to STORD to deliver a Prime-like logistics experience to their customers. In March, STORD announced $65 million in Series C financing led by Bond Ventures, bringing the total funding raised to more than $125 million.
STORD and its top warehouse partners will form the Warehousing and Fulfillment Innovation Coalition to ensure regular sharing of best practices and drive continuous innovation across the company's partner ecosystem. The group will meet on a quarterly basis to share and disseminate new ideas and insights.
"Our goal is to ensure that whether a customer's inventory is in STORD's facility or one of our partner facilities, the customer receives uniform, high-standard, and efficient fulfillment services across the entire STORD network," said Henry.
The space will be fully operational starting September 1. From day one, STORD will leverage both technology and robotics to automate and streamline fulfillment. STORD will partner with Locus Robotics, whose autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) help warehouses to double fulfillment productivity. STORD and Locus plan to use the new Atlanta space to refine STORD's capabilities and functionality with an eye on rolling out similar bots to partner warehouses in the coming quarters.
"We are excited to partner with STORD to deploy our powerful and efficient multi-bot solution to support their warehouse operations," said Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics. "Locus is proud to be a valued technology resource that is helping STORD realize their strategic vision of digital transformation to meet today's exploding fulfillment challenges."
Due to the high degree of complexity and opportunity for innovation, STORD will focus on high volume and velocity B2C fulfillment. However, STORD's new facility is uniquely equipped to support businesses of all types and product categories including B2B and Omnichannel shippers.
STORD is actively hiring for several positions for the new facility and expects to create hundreds of new jobs, specific to the operations of the facility, within the Atlanta area in the next two years. STORD will also use a portion of the warehouse for additional office space for its growing team as they transition back to in-person work. In 2020 STORD more than doubled its headcount and is on pace to do the same in 2021.