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Home » Flexe adds fulfillment services to on-demand warehouse model
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Flexe adds fulfillment services to on-demand warehouse model

April 21, 2016
Mark B. Solomon and Ben Ames
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Logistics software startup Flexe Inc. is adding case- and each-level handling and basic fulfillment services to its pallet-level on-demand warehousing model, the company said yesterday at the Georgia Logistics Summit in Atlanta. Flexe says it is making the move in order to meet rising demand from retail e-commerce companies.

Seattle-based Flexe was founded in 2013 to provide an alternative to the traditional long-term leases and contracts required by most warehouses to store goods. Flexe, which operates no real estate assets, uses its software to match DCs that have excess capacity with firms needing short-term space.

The service was originally designed for pallet-in, pallet-out storage. Now the company is extending that platform to include the more complex business of handling cases, eaches, and basic fulfillment services, Flexe CEO Karl Siebrecht said in a phone interview.

"Our clients who are using this are retail e-commerce companies that are growing pretty aggressively," Siebrecht said. "If you're a large company, there are a lot of 3PLs that will compete for your business, but if you're not that large it can be harder."

In the second half of 2015, Flexe saw increasing requests from companies that wanted to quickly add DCs to their e-commerce distribution networks in order to reach more consumers with overnight shipping.

"They are trying to keep up with the changes that Amazon is driving, training consumers to expect all deliveries within two days or less and at a low cost," Siebrecht said. "There are companies that are really struggling with that, and we can help a lot."

Flexe's new case and each handling capability will be confined to clients with limited SKU counts and minimal order complexity, Siebrecht said. "The simplest scenario is pallet in, pallet out. Now we've moved into fulfillment, but we're focused on the lower end of complexity," he said. "If someone has a list of thousands of SKUs and high order complexity, they would most likely need a customized fulfillment solution in the warehouse."

Despite that constraint, the new pop-up fulfillment service can also be useful for larger companies that want to expand a portion of their portfolio, he said.

Some Flexe customers need to expand their short-term warehouse capacity to support a seasonal demand surge or a product promotional peak. For example, a large retailer might specify a subset of its full SKU list for expanded warehouse space to stock a larger quantity of backpacks for a back-to-school promotion.

"They want to pop up new fulfillment nodes with low fixed cost and low commitment," said Siebrecht. "They can dial it up, then dial it down."

Technology Warehousing (WMS & WCS & WES)
KEYWORDS Flexe
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Marksolomon
Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
Benames
Ben Ames has spent 20 years as a journalist since starting out as a daily newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania in 1995. From 1999 forward, he has focused on business and technology reporting for a number of trade journals, beginning when he joined Design News and Modern Materials Handling magazines. Ames is author of the trail guide "Hiking Massachusetts" and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.

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