PICKUP, “the trusted Last Fast Mile for large-item delivery,” has closed a $5 million funding round led by TDF Ventures and Noro-Moseley Partners. Engage, an Atlanta-based venture fund, also participated in the round. The funds will be used to accelerate market expansion, grow the product platform and add staffing in key areas.
Last-mile delivery is especially difficult for oversized items such as furniture, where retailers face challenges with rising customer expectations in speed, flexibility and quality. PICKUP’s trust-verified “Good Guys,” help retailers drive sales conversion and make customers happy by enabling frictionless delivery of large items over the threshold and into the customer’s “room of choice.” The company’s intelligent platform is capable of dispatching product delivery to the nearest qualified Good Guys in as little as 30 seconds, enabling retailers to create a seamless delivery experience while capturing decision-quality data to improve business outcomes.
“The Good Guys are not your typical ‘delivery drivers’ or ‘crowdsourced marketplace people,’” chief customer guy, Darren Waxman tells FreightWaves. “PICKUP Good Guys are a tightly curated workforce that includes military veterans, first responders and handy pros who have demonstrated a high performance standard consistently in their careers. They include a mix of independent contractors and W2s (FT and PT) who are committed to excellence and empowered to make field level decisions that result in positive delivery outcomes for our retail partners.”
“Our focus is to help our retail partners create ‘WOW’ delivery experiences that are a seamless extension of their brand, so they can win more customers and keep them forever,” says Brenda Stoner, CEO of PICKUP. “The Good Guys are the best in the business and we continue to partner with top retailers as we strive to reach our goal of creating the leading last mile delivery service. This funding will fuel the resources and talent to scale our geographic coverage and technology capabilities, so we can reach more cities, more stores and more customers.”
“We are excited to partner with PICKUP on the changing dynamics of the last mile. Retail supply chains are rapidly shifting to accommodate local inventory driving a need for new options in delivery,” says Jim Pastoriza, Managing Partner of TDF Ventures. “The Company has formed strong partnerships with leading retail brands who want to bring PICKUP’s trusted Good Guys to more cities, representing a wide open growth opportunity. We’re delighted to support this innovative team.”
“Customer-controlled last-mile delivery is a game changer for retail brands, providing benefits in sales performance, customer experience and real-time logistics,” says Alan Taetle, Noro-Moseley Partners. “PICKUP accelerates this transition by eliminating the restrictions of traditional home delivery, such as limited visibility, speed and customization options.”
PICKUP currently operates in 26 markets and reaches 100 million consumers – with ongoing expansion plans.
TDF Ventures invests in seed and Series A stage start-ups focused on infrastructure, software, and services (IaaS, SaaS, XaaS). They invest from a $150 million permanent pool of capital and are currently investing out of Fund IV. Current areas of focus include cybersecurity, cloud services, data, edge computing, networking, financial technology, business process automation, satellite, mobility, AI/ML, and anything as a service. TDF has offices in Washington, D.C. and Silicon Valley.
Noro-Moseley Partners, based in Atlanta, is an early growth equity firm that invests in information technology and healthcare businesses with rapidly scaling revenue. Since 1983, NMP has been a leader in its market, investing more than $770 million in 200 companies.