Dive Brief:
- FedEx Dataworks and Cart.com announced a "strategic alliance" in which the two companies will share data to improve e-commerce fulfillment for both merchants and consumers, according to a Nov. 16 news release.
- The combined data and insights of the FedEx subsidiary and the e-commerce platform will allow the companies to create integrated solutions, per the release. These include enhanced fulfillment insights to help merchants strategically store and source inventory, more delivery options and improved shipping visibility.
- "It's really meant to be something that if you're already part of our fulfillment network, there's no new work that needs to go in on your part — you just have a richer data set to benefit from when you're on our platform," Cart.com Vice President of Brand Marketing Jay B Sauceda said in an interview. The company aims to deepen its relationship with FedEx in the coming years, he added.
Dive Insight:
The pairing provides unique benefits to both sides, said Sauceda, who previously served as Cart.com's VP of Logistics. FedEx gets a deeper look into the pre-purchase behavior of consumers on Cart.com client storefronts, giving it a sense of what volume levels will be. Cart.com gains access to post-purchase data and analytics to help it make the right network investments to better serve its customers.
"At the end of the day, everybody in the supply chain … is building uncertainty into their pricing, so the tighter the forecasting and the tighter the alliances there are with data, the more certainty you can build into your modeling," Sauceda said. "So from a pure economic perspective for our customers, this is ultimately going to play out into a much tighter, fully integrated delivery process and supply chain."
Cart.com, founded in November 2020, has over 6,000 brands on its platform, per its website. The company has been expanding its fulfillment network to help those brands meet consumer expectations, announcing in August it added 1.6 million square feet of U.S. warehouse capacity. That brought its fulfillment network to 10 facilities in seven markets and enabled it to deliver two-day shipping to 95% of the country.
Larger merchants on Cart.com can particularly benefit from the company's new alliance, as FedEx will be more prepared for product volume spikes that could emerge due to successful influencer or marketing campaigns. Sauceda used an organization Cart.com onboarded earlier this year as an example — it had to pull back on its marketing spend during the previous holiday season because its previous logistics provider couldn't keep up with order activity.
"Merchants don't have to pull their foot off the gas when they see success out of fear that their logistics partners won't be able to keep up," Sauceda said of the alliance.
Cart.com merchants will also be able to access consumers through the e-commerce platform ShopRunner, a FedEx subsidiary offering perks to members like free two-day shipping.
FedEx's work with Cart.com adds to the alliances the logistics giant has formed or extended this year, including a supply chain intelligence platform with FourKites and a "logistics as a service" solution with Microsoft.
“We’re developing new tools to help merchants make more informed supply chain decisions in alignment with their fulfillment plans, sustainability goals and consumer promises," Sriram Krishnasamy, CEO of FedEx Dataworks, said in a statement. "Now, by combining the reach and depth of Cart.com and FedEx data and analytics, we plan to offer an integrated set of capabilities designed to help merchants deliver best-in-class e-commerce experiences from inspiration to delivery and returns.”
