Richmond's Warehowz has had quite the year.
Since launching a $1 million seed round at the beginning of 2019, the on-demand warehousing platform joined a group of 18 logistics and supply chain companies selected to participate in Silicon Valley's Plug and Play incubator earlier this year.
"[Supply chain and logistics] is an interesting space, and a lot of people are adopting it," CEO Darrell Jervey told Inno. "Being one of those players was very flattering to us."
The program allowed Warehowz to take advantage of the incubator's education, guidance and mentorships. Jervey said a large part of the experience was networking with large corporations that could benefit from their platform and setting up pilot programs with these companies.
"Plug and Play introduced us to some very large national and international players and worked through some issues that we probably wouldn't have gotten to until later in the year," he said. "It also helped us identify some of our shortcomings, and we made some changes both to personnel and process based on feedback and information we got working with the Plug and Play mentors and staff."
In addition to mentorship and networking, Warehowz received a financial investment from Plug and Play, though they could not disclose the amount.
Warehowz operates as a two-sided online marketplace for warehouses with space available for short term and flexible leasing. With around 700 warehouses and 35 million-square-feet of available space at any given time, they now operate in every state in the U.S., as well as Southern Canada.
The company previously saw a large concentration of clients in the e-commerce space, particularly those looking to spread their distribution centers across the country.
As the Covid-19 continues impacting business worldwide, however, Jervey said Warehowz has experienced increased revenue from foodservice, PPE production and large retail suppliers working to figure out what to do with their overstock resulting from disrupted supply chains.
"Our philosophy is that warehousing should be easy, flexible and reliable, and those are the three hallmarks we speak about all the time with how we provide space to our clientele," Jervey said. "Really anyone who has a product-based supply chain is a very strong candidate for flexible, on-demand warehousing, and that's who we see come to us the most."
