Building a Startup

OVERVIEW

ShipBob, a technology platform offering simple, fast, and affordable e-commerce fulfillment to small and medium businesses, came to us with several challenges. They had emerged from startup mode with a need to raise their profile among a variety of stakeholders – media, potential customers, current customers and investors. Additionally, one month into our engagement, ShipBob informed us they were opening a new warehouse in San Francisco and were on the verge of announcing $17.5 Million in Series B funding.

SOLUTION

Wyecomm managed a coordinated press effort between ShipBob, Bain Capital Management and six other funding partners to announce the investment in top tier media. We developed all press materials, messaging and media trained ShipBob’s co-founders. When the announcement went live, we had articles run simultaneously in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Fortune, Axios Pro Rata and Crain’s Chicago Business. In addition to the funding announcement, we wove the San Francisco warehouse opening into the key messaging for ShipBob’s co-founders, who worked it into every story. Since the funding announcement, we have managed all ShipBob’s communications efforts, including:

Interviewing customers and writing case studies for ShipBob’s website and media efforts
Media training additional senior executives
Leveraging national expansion, thought leadership, corporate news and new offerings to garner news and attention and place stories and thought leadership pieces across business, trade and consumer publications
Coordinating the opening of ShipBob’s fifth warehouse in Dallas, Texas, which resulted in 15 new clients for ShipBob as well as stories in the Dallas Morning News and Dallas Business Journal
Building industry leadership by positioning ShipBob leadership as experts in e-commerce logistics
Ongoing content development and vertical market media relations efforts to generate additional awareness for ShipBob

RESULTS

Since early 2017, we have assisted in the company’s explosive growth – 300 percent – and the company’s most successful Q’4 ever, increased new business leads (more than 500 in one day during the Dallas warehouse event in November) and supported recruiting new talent in a highly competitive technology market in Chicago.