Whitebox raises $18 million
An e-commerce start-up headquartered in a Curtis Bay warehouse — once home to Under Armour’s distribution center — has raised $18 million in private equity investment and venture capital.
Whitebox offers e-commerce solutions to companies such as McCormick & Co., Ricola and ChicoBag, managing sales across multiple channels and fulfilling those orders wherever consumers choose to buy. Its clients sell through such sites as Amazon, BJ’s, Costco, eBay, Target, Walmart, Wayfair and their own branded sites.
In addition to the Curtis Bay facility, Whitebox has warehouses in Las Vegas and Memphis, Tennessee.
Marcus Startzel, the Baltimore-based firm’s chief operating officer, said in a statement that Noro-Moseley Partners drove much of the $18 million investment, which will enable Whitebox to accelerate its growth plans and provide more data to clients. The company employs 125 people.
“Whitebox understands how this change in consumer behavior will impact where the market is going and they are building a platform for modern commerce that will provide brands an integrated e-commerce solution to both drive growth and save costs,” said David Williams, global chairman of Merkle, one of the company’s existing investors.
Other investors include TDF Ventures; TCP Venture Capital’s Propel Baltimore Fund; and Chris Brandenburg, co-founder of Millennial Media, a Baltimore-digital advertising firm that was acquired by AOL in 2015. All of them are increasing their support, Whitebox said in a news release.
E-commerce has experienced an unprecedented boom during the coronavirus pandemic but made steady gains even before the public health crisis disrupted the consumer market and confined more people to their homes. Last month, Amazon announced that it would add 4,400 employees for its Maryland facilities as part of a massive companywide expansion. Separately, Macy’s announced the same week that it was seeking Marylanders for jobs at its fulfillment center in Joppa as part of a push to hire 1,000 people company-wide specifically for positioned related to online buying during the holiday season.
The 365,000-square-foot Curtis Bay warehouse, just across the Baltimore city line in northern Anne Arundel County, was occupied by Under Armour for years. The Baltimore-based athletic wear brand opened a massive new distribution center last year on the site of the former steel mill in Sparrows Point.