Earlier this month, the Houston-based provider of omnichannel and e-commerce logistics services acquired OceanX, the fulfillment operations arm of health and wellness direct marketing company Guthy-Renker. This deal gave the Adidas and Guess partner another two facilities totaling 600,000 square feet of warehouse space, and further extended the company’s logistics capabilities to more than 25 high-volume beauty, wellness and lifestyle brands.
In total, Cart.com now has 17 omnichannel fulfillment and distribution centers with nearly 10 million square feet and over 1,600 employees.
In a conversation with Sourcing Journal, Ilias Simpson, who was appointed president of Cart.com in September, shares insights into the company’s expansion plans, navigating new supply chain uncertainties with a new presidential administration and evolving consumer demands.
Sourcing Journal: You began your tenure as president of Cart.com in September. How has the start of the experience been for you so far?
Ilias Simpson: E-commerce is still hot. There’s still a lot of opportunity, yet still a lot of the same issues trying to be solved in terms of driving great customer experiences while managing costs and leveraging technology.
The first few weeks for me has been about figuring out where the biggest opportunities are for Cart.com’s growth, and what the best path forward for both growth and profitability is.
We’ve spent a lot of time on that, a lot of time getting to know our existing customer base and a lot of time evaluating our tech stack and where we need to continue to invest and develop. Having a fulfillment partner that can do multiple things has been a big focus of mine. It’s going well. This company is a rocket ship. It moves fast.
SJ: Given how much of a role fulfillment plays in the peak holiday season, where does Cart.com fit in?
IS: Peak is always critical. I’d be lying if I didn’t say, every year, clients tell me that this is the most critical peak.
We were in a mode where a lot of brands did the all-week Black Friday and early Black Friday sales to compete with Amazon, so we really started peak in the week prior versus the week of Black Friday. For some clients, we really started seeing a lot of the outbound volume in mid-November. And obviously the inbound volume, we started seeing that in October.
We’ve been helping clients get through peak, but also think about their growth and expansion plans in 2025.
SJ: With possible de minimis reform on the horizon, what have you been seeing and hearing from clients?
IS: We’ve been hearing from most brands and most clients that they’re going in and planning to bring more of their business back into the U.S., just to get ahead of it. It varies depending on the client, of how extreme they went the other direction with putting fulfillment, or other services overseas.
That’s been a big focus. Nobody wants to be the last one to the party, so we have a lot of clients who are quickly trying to get back into the U.S. and Canada as soon as possible.
SJ: Where do the opportunities lie now that there could be a shift to more domestic logistics and production operations?
IS: That helps us. We didn’t have a lot of international presence in the past, so as brands and retailers are looking to do more in the U.S., we’re positioned well to help them. We have space available. We have an existing network here.
For us, it’s a good thing when businesses are looking to come back to the U.S., and it does create more opportunity for us, so we’re excited.
SJ: What did you learn from your prior experience at Radial, that has helped you early in your tenure at Cart.com? What lessons have you taken from those experiences?
IS: For me, the biggest piece is understanding the mindset of these customers and these clients, understanding what’s important to them, and being able to focus on understanding the ins and outs of their business and the challenges that they face.
Being in this space for a long time, you start to pick up little things like understanding that when you’re talking speed—it’s not just “How fast?”, but it’s also meeting that promise delivery date. Some customers are okay with two days, as long as when you tell them two days, it’s actually two days.
There’s also the complexities that come with peak. We would go from 6,000-to-7,000 employees to over 20,000 employees during peak season at Radial, so there are challenges that come with both maintaining your processes and maintaining an operationally excellent environment as you scale, as well as maintaining profitability as you scale and grow your network.
This applies to how you add space in a profitable way and how you think about structuring your fulfillment centers, both of which are a lot of what we’re working on at Cart.com as well.
SJ: What are Cart.com’s goals to scale its fulfillment operation?
IS: We have some pretty aspirational goals. We want to double the size of the business we are now. It’s obviously going to take adding footprint. It’s going to take adding some large clients. We’ve had pretty consistent growth the last three years.
We think it’s very feasible to be a billion-dollar company in the in terms of revenue, within the next couple of years. That’s absolutely where we want to go.
SJ: What is the Cart.com team looking forward to the most about 2025?
IS: The biggest thing on the horizon for us is just wanting to get more of a global footprint. Right now, we have employees in the U.S., Europe and Mexico, but we want to fulfill the orders globally at some point. We’re opening a site in Canada, and we already we have client engagement in Mexico.
We want to continue to expand with our existing client base. We have a huge focus on high-growth e-commerce brands in 2025 so we want to continue to look at those brands who are looking to move into omnichannel.
We’ve traditionally done a lot of retail, with clients like Toms, PacSun and others. But we also are exploring more life sciences and looking to see what we can do in that space. We’ll continue to look at how we can expand into different categories and just find more high-growth brands, all while remaining profitable.
We hit profitability last year, and we’re going be profitable again this year. That’s unique for a company like ours this early, and we want to maintain that and continue to grow our profit margins.
SJ: As you continue to scale, how are e-commerce brands’ demands evolving, and how is your team solving them?
IS: Speed and quality. We have a lot of clients talking to us about multiple nodes so that they can get even faster delivery to their customers. I think that’s e-commerce and retail in general.
Speed is still definitely part of the game here. We try to ship everything same day. That’s our standard service level. The closer we are to the customers, the faster they’re going to get the product.
As for quality, it’s about making sure that the experience for the customer fits what the brand is looking to provide, right? With a lot of these brands, that loyalty is very important. That’s how they grow and how they build the way their customer base shops with them. We are a huge part of that. We’re often the last ones to touch their product, so we’ll continue to focus on quality.
Speed and quality are definitely what we’re hearing from clients, and we do those things well.
