Tobias Buxhoidt, Julian Krenge, and Anton Eder want to transform traditionally arcane and difficult to navigate operational experiences into frictionless customer encounters with transparency and guidance. In 2015, Buxhoidt, Krenge, and Eder founded parcelLab in Germany, which today offers a final-mile fulfillment service for online retailers.
The niche they discovered was the shipping process, and the solution they created was to help fill the gaps. There was a huge user experience gap between the moment the customers check out from their favorite store and the moment they receive the product. ParcelLab develops two main products: tailored delivery notifications and a custom track & trace page.
Today, parcelLab works with Ikea, Farfetch and most recently Lidl, to which it provides automated personalized shipping messages. This brings as many as 85% of Lidl customers back to its website.
“As e-commerce becomes increasingly competitive, providing unique and branded experiences will drive growth,” says Buxhoidt, CEO of parcelLab. “We’re super excited and proud to be on this journey and looking forward to disrupting new industry sectors with operations experience.”
In May, the company announced that it had raised $112 million in a Series C funding round led by Insight Partners. Germany’s Endeit Capital participated as a co-investor, alongside existing investors Capnamic Ventures and coparion. ParcelLab last raised an undisclosed Series B in October 2019.
ParcelLab describes its system as an "operational experience platform," providing white-label technologies to brands for better communication of final-mile delivery status. Once a product is ordered, the platform allows customers to send messages to brands and communicates back to them all updates, including order preparation, shipping, returns, and refunds.
ParcelLab has also helped customers to achieve double-digit basket size increases, email open rates of over 90%, 25% reductions in WISMO (where is my order), and triple-digit increases in customer reviews. The company has offices in New York, Munich, London, and Paris.
ParcelLab’s main competitor is U.S.-based Narvar which recently raised $64 million with its last Series C funding round.
The company now operates in over 153 countries and is integrated with 150+ carriers as it sends out seven million proactive and personalized communications every day. The new funding will bankroll parcelLab’s global expansion plans and new product development.
