On a summer day in 2021, Aly Hancock could tell that Mike Rude wasn’t in a good mood. Both worked at FedEx, and he had been her mentor for six years. Hancock knew him well.
So, she suggested they meet up and brainstorm — which is what Rude typically does when he’s frustrated.
“If I’ve had a stressful day, I just think of a problem to try and solve,” Rude said. “Problem-solving gets me up in the morning.”
Within an hour, Rude and Hancock had conceptualized plans for a software platform that they believed could make a significant impact on the rapidly growing world of e-commerce — and those plans have helped lead them to where they are today.
Rude and Hancock are the CEO and president of S+V Technologies, the Memphis-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup that’s set to provide online merchants with another class of inventory.
In August, the two left FedEx, after spending most of their careers with the company.
Rude started with FedEx as a package handler in 1991, and left as a VP of e-commerce. Hancock started as a business account executive in 2015, and left as an e-commerce worldwide account manager. The two started formalizing details and fundraising in early October, and officially filed articles of incorporation for S+V on Dec. 29.
Flash-forward to the present, and they’re gearing up for a beta launch of their offering, which will be followed by a full launch.
Products inbound
The flagship product of S+V is “Stock in Motion,” a platform plug-in for online stores. In addition to the inventory classes “in-stock” and “out-of-stock,” it will provide consumers and merchants with a third option, which, like the software, is also called “stock-in-motion.”
U.S.-based merchants will be able to sell inbound products rather than wait for them to arrive at a fulfillment center, provided they’re in-route by air, road, or rail. Eventually, the startup hopes to extend the offering to foreign merchants too.
“You begin to sell items off of airplanes and trucks, and rail cars, versus waiting [for them to arrive],” Rude said.
And consumers — along with being able to buy products sooner — can track inventory that’s considered “stock-in-motion,” through a Google map.
Here’s an example of how it works.
Let’s say you’re shopping online and looking for a pair of hiking boots. If the pair you want falls under the “stock-in-motion” category, it will still have an estimated arrival date for when you’d receive the product. You’ll also be able to click on a line that says, “see item in motion,” which will take you to a Google map. There will be a pin in the product’s original location, a pin in the fulfillment center it’s headed to, and a line drawn for all the transit that’s already occurred.
If the pair of boots' ultimate journey takes it from Dallas to Nashville, and so far it’s traveled from Dallas to Little Rock, and Little Rock to Memphis, the line will stop in Memphis.
“We’ll allow for merchants to provide visibility for their products, when it’s in motion,” Hancock said.
A problem to fix
Rude and Hancock’s offering comes as the number of out-of-stock products has increased amid the highly congested supply chain. According to the Adobe Digital Economy Index, consumers saw 60 billion out-of-stock messages online between March 2020 and February 2022. The odds of seeing such a message are now one in 59 pages — a 235% increase from the one-in-200-page ratio seen pre-pandemic.
And these types of out-of-stock levels can lead to problems for merchants, as stockouts can be a major customer pain point. In early 2021, a report from the software and consultancy company Blue Yonder said that 51% of retailers cited out-of-stock products as their biggest fulfillment challenge.
“When it is out of stock, [consumers] leave the site, and never shop with that brand again,” Hancock asserted. “That’s how negative an experience it is.”
Looking ahead
S+V Technologies plans to launch its product on a small scale with a group of beta customers by April 1. The full launch will initially see “Stock in Motion” listed on the e-commerce platform Shopify, though it’s expected to later also be listed on the platforms BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and several others.
The startup doesn’t have a set date for the full launch yet, but Rude said his “aggressive goal” is around mid-May.
“People think I’m crazy,” he said. “But I have ways of getting things done fast.”
In its first seed round, S+V raised $500,000, with an investment team that’s made up of venture capital firm Ridgeline Partners, Chicago Ventures, and Jett McCandless, the founder and CEO of project44 — the supply chain visibility solutions provider with over $800 million in funding, according to CrunchBase.
Five years from now, Rude and Hancock want S+V to have annual recurring revenue of about $100 million, and in year one, they want it to have annual recurring revenue of $3 million.
That, however, is just the financial goal. The pair also want to mentor other prospective entrepreneurs, as well as youth and students in the community. And they want the term “stock-in-motion” to become commonplace in the digital marketplace.
“There’s a big conference, that will happen early 2023, put on by the National Retail Federation,” Rude said. “We want somebody we’ve never met, on stage, to use the term ‘Stock in Motion.' That [shows] we have become a part of the fabric of e-commerce. … That’s what our vision is, and everything we do, is toward that."
