Cart.com, an e-commerce startup founded in Houston in 2020, moved its headquarters from the Bayou City to Austin in 2021. After two years that included expansions across the company and a unicorn valuation, the company is coming home.
In its Nov. 20 announcement, Cart.com said its Houston move would enable the company to be better connected to its seven corporate offices, including international offices in Poland and Mexico. The company is also seeking talent in accounting, finance, human resources and legal services and decided Houston is the ideal spot to find those employees.
“I couldn’t be happier to bring Cart.com back home to Houston as we continue to revolutionize how merchants sell and fulfill products to meet customers anywhere they are,” co-founder and CEO Omair Tariq said in a press release. “The idea for Cart.com was born in Houston, and we’ve always maintained a strong local presence with the majority of our executive team and board based here. As our customer mix increasingly moves upmarket and our own needs evolve, I’m confident Houston has what we need as we look towards the next stage of Cart.com’s growth story.”
Tariq also shared his personal ties to the area in a statement provided to the Houston Business Journal.
“I moved to Houston as a 16-year-old first generation immigrant from Pakistan and have done everything from working at gas stations to delivering pizzas to building my first entrepreneurial venture at the Houston flea markets,” Tariq said. “The city has made me who I am today and my family and I have come to love its diversity, kindness and ease of allowing people like us to not only blend in, but thrive.”
Cart.com searching for larger space, local hires
Cart.com is currently looking for a larger office space to centralize the company’s operations, Remington Tonar, a Cart.com co-founder and chief growth officer, told the Houston Business Journal in an interview. Although a specific location has not been nailed down, the company is looking in the same area of town as its current space in The Cannon's West Houston location, where Cart.com was founded, he said.
“Through the pandemic up until maybe last year, a tremendous amount of focus, attention, capital, resources has gone into the front end of commerce,” Tonar said. “But few people have paid attention to the post-purchase part, which is the most important part for the customer. One of the things we hope to extract from having a bigger presence in Houston, which is a logistics hub, is that we’ll get folks with that supply chain experience.”
Tonar confirmed the company is prioritizing Houston for new hires, and it currently has 50 employees in the Bayou City. Cart.com said that while it remains a remote-first company, employees would convene in the Houston location when necessary.
The Greater Houston Partnership said in a statement to the HBJ that Cart.com maintained its relationship with the organization even after its headquarters moved away.
"Cart.com’s homecoming is a testament to why companies repeatedly choose Houston to scale their business with its diverse and dynamic economy along with its unparalleled talent pool that cuts across technology, professional services and global trade," outgoing GHP CEO Bob Harvey said in the statement. "We’re excited to support Cart.com’s continued growth and look forward to the company’s contribution to Houston’s growing tech community.”
The ups and downs of Cart.com's time in Austin
Similar to its return to Houston, Cart.com’s initial move to Austin was also driven by a search for talent. The company was searching for software developers to scale up its e-commerce technology, which is offered to other businesses ranging from online shopping to shipping. Following that move, Cart.com recorded rapid growth, with revenue increasing 500% in 2022.
The company also made several acquisitions after moving to the state capital, following the eight deals it sealed during its first year in Houston. In July 2023, Cart.com announced a $60 million funding round and hit unicorn status, meaning it was valued at over $1 billion.
When the company moved to Austin, Tariq previously said Cart.com aimed to go public in one to three years. Tonar did not confirm any timeline but told the HBJ that Cart.com's return to Houston would also allow the company to continue its focus on profitability, which it achieved last year.
"The company that we were in late 2020 and through 2021 and part of 2022 was absolutely a company that was built for revenue growth at all costs," Tonar said. "Now the mandate has turned towards looking at profitability and cash flow, and the culture of a place like Houston is attuned to that kind of operating model."
Cart.com was one of many tech companies that slashed jobs earlier this year, attributing the cuts to a need to restructure. A company spokesperson told the HBJ that Cart.com’s Austin workforce is at around 100 employees, and its total workforce is close to 1,400, though numbers fluctuate in periods of high demand due to seasonal hires.
Tonar said the company does not plan immediate reductions of its Austin headcount, but it would revisit vacating the Cart.com office in the capital once its lease is up.
