IT’S A MADE-IN-CHINA HOLIDAY SEASON FOR COOPED-UP AMERICANS AS IMPORTS SURGE
U.S. imports from China are surging as the year draws to a close, fueled by stay-at-home shoppers who are snapping up Chinese-made furniture and appliances, along with Barbie Dream Houses and bicycles for the holidays.
The surge in imports is another byproduct of the coronavirus, with Americans channeling money they might have spent on vacations, movies and restaurant dining to household items like new lighting for home offices, workout equipment for basement gyms and toys to keep their children entertained.
That has been a boon for China, the world’s largest manufacturer of many of those goods. In November, China reported a record trade surplus of $75.43 billion, propelled by an unexpected 21.1 percent surge in exports compared with the same month last year. Leading the jump were exports to the United States, which climbed 46.1 percent to $51.98 billion, also a record.
That surge has defied the expec
tations of U.S. politicians of both parties, who earlier this year predicted that the pandemic, which began in China, would be a moment for reducing trade with that country and finally bringing factories back to the
United States.
“The global pandemic has proven once and for all that to be a strong nation, America must be a manufacturing nation,” President Donald
year ago. The company now has nearly 200 workers — up from 90 in June.
The firm developed a cloudbased platform that brings together myriad workforce collaboration software tools in one digital place for things like development, project management, human resources, business operations and remote work.
The market is hotly competitive, with Asana, Monday.com, Jira and Wrike among the several players in the space. Wrike also has operations in San Diego.
Over the next few years, the business productivity software market is expected to grow 13 percent annually on average to $102 billion by 2027, according to Grand View Research.
ClickUp’s platform is used by 200,000 employee groups, including teams within Google, Uber, Nike and Netf lix. Revenue has increased more than 900 percent over the past year.
Evans said ClickUp plans to use the additional funding to boost speed and reliability of its software, as well as improve features and customer support.
“We’re only about 60 percent finished with our vision for ClickUp,” he said. “In 2021, we plan to fully realize our vision of making the world more productive by adding in even more innovative features, improving existing ones and launching a configuration wizard that makes work even easier and more efficient for everyone and every team in an organization.”
The latest funding round was led by Georgian, which also has invested in Shopify, FreshBooks, Top Hat and others in the past. Craft Ventures, which has backed Slack, Bird, Uber SpaceX and Reddit, also participated.