Sent Items #168: Sunday, October 27, 2024

Yankees are down 2-0.

They should have won the first game. Last night was trash. Aaron Judge needs to prove his captain worthiness.

I’ll be at the stadium for Game 4 - Tuesday night. Here’s hoping they win tomorrow night and tie it up Tuesday night!

On that note, I am hosting a happy hour in NYC Wednesday afternoon. If you are in NY, hit reply and I will send you the invite with time and location.

Nimble Closes $106 Million Series C Funding Round, Scales Fully Autonomous Fulfillment with FedEx (link)

• Nimble, a pioneering AI robotics and autonomous e-commerce fulfillment technology company, today announced the successful closure of a $106 million Series C funding round elevating the company to a $1 billion valuation.

  “The company’s fully autonomous turnkey fulfillment centers will generate unique operational and economic efficiencies for FedEx and all of Nimble’s customers.”

• The funding round was led by FedEx and co-led by existing shareholder Cedar Pine LLC. As part of their strategic alliance, FedEx has entered into a commercial agreement to scale its FedEx Fulfillment service using Nimble's technology and fully autonomous 3PL model. The investment underscores FedEx’s confidence in Nimble's groundbreaking technology and its commercial potential.

• The new capital will be strategically deployed to scale robot manufacturing and system deployments while enabling further investments in R&D towards Nimble’s mission of inventing autonomous logistics.

  Revolutionizing Warehouses

• Simon Kalouche, founder and CEO of Nimble, articulates the company’s unique value proposition: “Today’s warehouse automation systems require integrators to stitch together fragmented point solutions from dozens of equipment and software vendors, resulting in overly complex, inefficient, and expensive systems that are difficult to integrate, operate and maintain. The unattractive ROI and operational challenges of patchwork systems has limited the adoption of robotics to just 10% of the market. Nimble directly addresses this gap with turnkey autonomous fulfillment centers powered by our intelligent general-purpose warehouse robots—the first to reliably and cost-effectively handle all core fulfillment tasks. Our end-to-end fulfillment system replaces over a dozen individual pieces of equipment and software, streamlining installation, operations, maintenance and scalability while eliminating as much as 70% of the cost.”

Amazon Sofas for $20? Retailer Sets Price Caps for New Temu-like Store (link)

• Amazon is imposing severe price caps on what merchants can charge for their products on a new low-cost storefront that the e-commerce giant is preparing to launch, The Information reported on Tuesday.

• The company’s price limits include $8 for jewellery, $13 for guitars and $20 for sofas, according to the report, which cited messages from Amazon to merchants. The messages included a list of 700 items, it said.

• Amazon plans to ship orders to US customers directly from a facility in Guangdong, China, the report said, adding that it was charging sellers lower fulfillment fees for items sold through the new storefront.

• Before Low-Cost Store, most sellers — including sellers in China and U.S. sellers — individually shipped inventory using ocean freight from China to FBA warehouses to be ready for two-day or faster domestic delivery. Now, sellers will ship to Amazon’s warehouses in Guangdong, from where customer orders will be shipped using air freight and reach shoppers in the U.S. in 9-11 days, under the de minimis threshold, and thus, for now, tariff-free.

The Holiday Returns Playbook: Turning Post-Holiday Returns into Profits (link)

• Two Boxes has shared their first ever benchmark report! Since launching in 2023, they’ve helped hundreds of brands process millions of returns in a more intelligent, efficient, and profitable manner.

• With every return they process, they are able to track not only stated return reasons, but also the actual quality of returns across our customer base.

• Their 2024 Holiday Benchmark Report is designed to help brands and 3PLs learn from our experience. In this report, you’ll find information on key return trends and the opportunities we have seen to improve return operations, combat returns fraud, and more.

• This report barely scratches the surface of Two Boxes’ data. If you’re a brand or 3PL looking to put our technology to work for you, hit reply and I will connect you with their team so you can schedule a demo.

Stability in Freight Markets Is Reviving Logistics Dealmaking (link)

• There have been several large logistics deals in the U.S. over the past year. UPS recently sold its freight-brokerage unit, Coyote Logistics, to rival middleman RXO for just over $1 billion. Trucking company Forward Air is exploring a sale amid activist pressure following a contentious recent takeover of Omni Logistics.

• GXO, which had revenue last year of $9.8 billion, recently received an unsolicited bid and is now weighing “high-quality inbound offers,”

• Logistics specialists say activity has slowed sharply on the hundreds of smaller deals that usually flow through the sector. There were just 872 mergers and acquisitions in the global transportation and logistics market last year, according to consulting firm KPMG, down 21% from 2021. The value of last year’s deals totaled just under $43 billion, a decline of 76%.

• Now, that landscape is changing. Armstrong said his firm tracked 12 deals of more than $100 million in the first six months of this year, up from nine such deals in all of 2023. He said his firm, which advises on potential mergers and acquisitions, is seeing much more interest from companies of all sizes looking to sell. Industry specialists say the recent pullback in interest rates is also helping spur activity.

• They say some of the greatest potential M&A activity is in companies owned by private-equity firms, which usually buy and hold companies for about five years. Some of those firms have had to wait to sell companies because of the pandemic-driven volatility in the freight market.

• Dan Howard, a managing director and head of North America transport at Goldman Sachs, said the strong growth in freight demand early in the pandemic triggered a seller’s market in which private-equity firms used low borrowing costs to outbid strategic investors. Today, he said, with interest rates still elevated, most of the activity is being driven by strategic investors. “It’s all buyer driven,” Howard said. “Unsolicited knocks on doors and bilateral conversations.”

• Some of the best material for holiday parcel shipping is brought to you by my friends at DCL - check out their Demand Surcharges for 2024 Holiday Shipping and 2024 Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Have a great week (and go Yankees!)

- Matt

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