Another Seattle e-commerce logistics startup is raising more cash.
This time it’s SoundCommerce, which just announced a $15 million Series A round.
SoundCommerce aims to help online retailers improve operational efficiency by gathering their data across various systems and channels. The idea is to provide new insights and answer questions about profitability, forecasting, logistics, inventory, and more. SoundCommerce integrates with and pulls data from major commerce systems such as Amazon, Shopify, Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and more.
“The output of SoundCommerce is a data warehouse, either in Snowflake or Google BigQuery,” explained Sound Commerce CEO and co-founder Eric Best. “And we give ownership and control of that data warehouse to our customer.”
Sound Commerce is seeing tailwinds from the acceleration of e-commerce amid the pandemic. The trend is also helping other Seattle e-commerce logistics companies such as Fabric and Pipe17 attract investor dollars as demand increases for their technology.
Seattle e-commerce giant Amazon is perhaps the largest beneficiary of the online shopping surge over the past year. Sound Commerce wants to its customers — companies such as Eddie Bauer, Constellation Brands, and Mejuri — to “think and act like Amazon” in terms of data analytics capabilities.
“As these brands get started, the focus is on product design, digital marketing, customer experience,” Best said. “But as they scale, it’s inevitable that they have to shift their focus from front office concerns to back office concerns. We’re really trying to catch these brands as they grow into that moment.”
Best said Amazon’s recent acquisition of Selz, a Shopify competitor, shows that online retailers are increasingly trying to run e-commerce operations on their own. He cited stats showing Amazon’s share of e-commerce sales growth decreasing year-over-year in 2020, signaling gains made by independent brands that Sound Commerce serves.
Best previously sold Seattle marketing technology company Mercent to CommerceHub and launched SoundCommerce with Jared Stiff, a former engineering leader at CommerceHub.
Emergence Capital led the Series A round, which included participation from previous backers Defy Partners and Voyager Capital. Sound Commerce raised $6.5 million seed round in 2019. The company has 30 employees and expects to double headcount this year.
