ShipRush helps companies manage last mile shipping. (Bigstock Photo)

Canadian logistics software company Descartes Systems Group has acquired ShipRush, a Seattle company that helps small and medium-sized companies and retailers manage their shipping operations.

The purchase price is $14 million, with an additional $3 million in potential incentives. ShipRush is published by an entity called Z-Firm LLC, and it was founded by Rafael and Anya Zimberoff. ShipRush has 12 people based in Seattle, and it has been here since 1998.

Shipping is a huge part of the business for retail giants like Amazon and Walmart, and that’s true of smaller companies as well. But unlike the big companies, which can take huge losses on shipping to gain customers, smaller retailers have to keep costs down, and that’s where ShipRush comes in.

ShipRush helps businesses streamline their supply chain and reduce transportation costs by automatically importing orders, comparing carrier rates, printing shipping labels for all major carriers, and tracking through final delivery. ShipRush integrates with 60 major e-commerce, marketplace, payment and accounting sites, including Amazon, Big Commerce, eBay, Etsy, Magento, Intuit, Rakuten, Shopify and WooCommerce.

Descartes, which is based outside of Toronto and has more than 1,200 employees, was interested in ShipRush because of its ability to save customers money by integrating e-commerce systems and shipping solutions and to help retailers wth last mile delivery. For ShipRush, the acquisition means its customers will have access logistics management, freight and international shipping options from Descartes.

“By joining the Descartes community, ShipRush’s SMB customers will be able to expand the complexity and scope of their e-commerce operations using a single platform where their entire logistics network can exist, regardless of the range of transportation modes or the variety of trading partners in their supply chain,” ShipRush founder Rafael Zimberoff said in a statement.

Z-Firm, the original company that made ShipRush, goes back to 1992. It started as a tech consulting firm, but switched its focus to shipping in the late 1990s. The first big break for ShipRush came in 2003, when Intuit started using ShipRush technology in QuickBooks.

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