August 5, 2022 | By Nicolas Stehle, Founder & CEO at Scalefast
Global ecommerce is a complex undertaking that requires a turnkey solution for emerging and existing companies.
Over the last eight years at Scalefast, we built a business that leads all aspects of our customers’ global ecommerce business, from a state-of-the-art platform to international warehousing, inventory management, shipping and return services. Now we have merged with ESW, the world’s leading direct to consumer (DTC) ecommerce company, a partnership that will enable us to help businesses further streamline their offerings and reach customers in every corner of the globe. Our long term investors include Benhamou Global Ventures, Crédit Mutuel Equity, Adara Ventures.
A one-stop shop for ecommerce
I have been working with my founding partners Frédéric Bocquet and Olivier Schott since 2000. Over the years we founded companies in the areas of payment solutions, security, and social media. We saw the complexity of selling online and realized that brands needed a partner to help them profitably navigate and grow this critical retail channel. We established Scalefast in 2014 to incorporate our expertise into a truly great ecommerce-as-a-service company.
Today, Scalefast operates out of our headquarters in Los Angeles, and includes branch locations in Spain, France, Switzerland, and Japan. We offer our customers a full suite of services that allows them to quickly build and grow secure ecommerce sites – and we save them money by eliminating the need to build and maintain a fleet of international web stores.
Our products are geared for high volume and high performance. Our customers, which include some of the world’s biggest brands, use our solutions for their primary web stores, product launches, and flash sales.
We offer our clients, mainly large international brands a one-stop shop in ecommerce, a solution that allows them to do what they do best – building their product and strengthening their brand – while we take care of retail infrastructure, customer support, payments, and fraud protection.
Cross-border offerings
The merger with ESW accelerates our ability to provide ecommerce solutions around the world. Partnering with ESW was especially attractive because of the company’s expertise in cross-border commerce. ESW’s parent company is Asendia, a joint partnership of France’s La Poste and and Swiss Post. The resources and scale of a giant player is exactly what we needed to reach the next level of performance.
The process was not without its challenges, however. ESW’s shareholders voted on the acquisition just two hours after Russia invaded Ukraine. Add to that a worldwide financial crisis and we felt fortunate to close the deal when we did.
Making the impossible possible
None of this would have been possible without a true love of business and a lot of hard work to acquire major clients in a short time. When I moved to Los Angeles with my wife and three daughters a few years ago, I we had enough cash for one year. It was literally win or go home. We succeeded but that was one of the hardest years of my life.
I learned that, as a startup, you don’t succeed unless you make the impossible possible. It’s much easier for a customer to partner with a large, established player with a proven track record, so we had to offer solutions and provide agility that the big companies lacked.
Over the last two years, we have tripled in size from 100 to over 300 employees. At the same time, we exit trading at a gross margin that’s superior to industry leaders like Shopify.
We won’t stop here. It’s an exciting time to be in the ecommerce business and to be part of a great team invested in Scalefast’s success.
