The Baltimore-based Whitebox, with its unusual business model providing a range of logistics and e-commerce services to brands, in September closed on an $18 million Series B financing round, following its Series A round of $5 million in 2019, and a $2.6 million seed round in 2017.
“We are shipping hundreds of thousands of orders on a monthly basis. We are still a small company, with 150 employees, but growing very fast,” said Marcus Startzel, chief executive officer of Whitebox. “There are a lot of decisions along the way, on the marketing and sales side. You’ve got to think about product selection first. Then you have to think about pricing,” Startzel explained. “You have to compete with resellers. A lot of distributors sell on Amazon as well. Then you just have the continuing optimizing of ads and content. Amazon advertising can be extraordinary profitable, and doing it well can drive a lot of great sales.
“There are a lot of rules and a lot of nuances that can trip you up with working with the marketplaces, but once you are good at it and understand the right process and have the tools and tech to update and maintain, you can have a robust business.”Considering its wide range of services, the Whitebox business model seems unusual. But Startzel puts it plain and simple: “We’re an end-to-end e-commerce technology partner to take products from factory floor to front door.