In e-commerce, success is often a double-edged sword — and no one knows that better than Skubana founder Chad Rubin.
Ten years ago, Rubin sold vacuum filter bags online. His idea took off, and he quickly went from zero to millions in online revenue — a dream for any e-commerce seller.
What he didn’t see coming was the challenge he’d face in keeping up with those orders, said DJ Kunovac, Skubana’s co-founder and CTO.
“His success was only matched by the epic failure to scale,” Kunovac said. “He oversold. He tried a slew of software to fix his problems, but he couldn’t find one.”
And that’s where Kunovac stepped in. Kunovac met Rubin in 2013 to help build an inventory management system. After seeing the challenges Rubin faced in hopping from software to software to spreadsheet to manage his slew of orders, he realized a different solution was needed. He required a platform that consolidated the entire back-end process into one place, and Kunovac would help him build it.
There’s a tangled web of complexity of how you go about managing thousands of orders.”
From that, the seeds of Skubana were planted. The company launched in New York in 2013 with a do-it-all e-commerce fulfillment platform, and today, it has announced the raise of $5.4 million in Series A funding.
The round will help the company double its 30 person team, with a focus on growing its branding and marketing teams.
“We’ve gotten to a whole lot of revenue with no sales and zero marketing,” Kunovac said. “Chad has been a one-man marketing machine. So first, we’ll have to invest in our branding and marketing.”
Skubana’s platform has made a name for itself by automating the entire back-end process for e-commerce retailers, allowing them to do what they do best — selling.
As Kunovac likes to say, they “do all the dirty plumbing.”
The platform kicks into gear once an order is placed. Skubana finds the item in the warehouse nearest to the consumer, coordinates the most cost-effective shipping method, mails it and then re-stocks it for the retailer. The platform can also tell a brand how much they’re making and losing on a product relative to each website they sell it on.
It’s never been easier to sell online, Kunovac said, but that’s also opened up a can of new challenges.
“There’s a tangled web of complexity of how you go about managing thousands of orders and knowing which shipping dimensions to use and which warehouse to ship from,” Kunovac said. “We operate at the intersection of all these sales channels and metrics.”
With this round, the Skubana appointed Brian Lee, one of the leading experts in e-commerce, to its board to help lead the company’s expansion. Defy Partners led the round with participation from Advancit Capital and FJ Labs.
For Kunovac and Rubin, this round serves as validation that they’re on the right path, but it’s just the start to what it hopes is a long and successful journey.
“It’s surreal,” Kunovac said. “We’ve come a long way, but our journey is at the beginning. We have a long way to go and a lot of things to accomplish.”
