Houston-based e-commerce unicorn Cart.com has struck its first deal since making the Bayou City its headquarters again.
Cart.com said April 2 it acquired Amify Inc., which has billed itself as an “Amazon-as-a-service” provider.
As part of the deal, Amify CEO Chris Mehrabi will lead Cart.com’s professional services business as the company’s new chief delivery officer. The role means Mehrabi will oversee marketplace services, customer call centers and customer services, among other duties. He will report to Cart.com founder and CEO Omair Tariq.
Christine McCambridge, Amify’s COO, will join Cart.com as a vice president of marketplace solutions. Over 24 Amify employees will join Cart.com alongside Mehrabi and McAmbridge, but a spokesperson confirmed to the Houston Business Journal that they will work remote-first like the rest of the company’s workforce.
“I’m happy to welcome the entire Amify team to Cart.com and have industry veterans Chris Mehrabi and Christine McCambridge join our leadership team,” Tariq said in the company's announcement. “Amify has been widely recognized for their expertise and technology, and we’re excited to leverage their experience to help our customers maximize their potential across channels.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Cart.com filed a Form D with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 27 for $17 million in equity related to the transaction. The company could not comment further on the filing but said it is related to a stock component of the deal.
Amify works with direct-to-consumer brands to provide insights into their Amazon performance using data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. The company was founded in 2010 in Virginia before adding a second headquarters in Cincinnati in 2019, according to the Cincinnati Business Courier, an HBJ sister publication.
Houston-based Mercury Fund, which is also an investor in Cart.com, led a $10 million Series B round for Amify in May 2023. Mehrabi and McAmbridge were both promoted to their positions in Amify’s C-suite prior to that funding.
After Cart.com moved its headquarters from Houston to Austin in 2021, it acquired Portland-area company SellerActive and Dallas-based fulfillment and logistics company FB Flurry.
The e-commerce company returned its headquarters Houston late last year, seeking further logistics talent and what co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Remington Tonar described as Fortune-type resources. Tonar confirmed the company hit profitability for the first time in 2023. Tariq and Tonar, along with other members of the company’s leadership team, were based in Houston even after Cart.com’s initial headquarters move.
In addition to bringing its HQ back to the Bayou City, Cart.com had said it would be seeking a permanent headquarters space in the Houston area. However, the company recently confirmed to the HBJ that a decision on the search would be pushed back to the second half of 2024.
Cart.com hit unicorn status, a term identifying privately held startups that are valued at $1 billion or more, last year. In 2023, Pitchbook found 43 new companies achieved this valuation in North America, a steep drop from 203 companies in 2022.
