A startup hoping to provide a reliable alternative to Amazon has raised funding to double down on the gap in the market. PrettyDamnQuick (PDQ), which provides technology to retailers that allows them to customize and test different delivery and checkout flows, has been awarded a unique contract. That's $25 million in Series A to expand the business.
New York-based PDQ already has about 200 customers since its founding in 2020, and says it currently processes about 30 million orders each month. This translates to $4 billion in total merchandise volume to date, and the company expects to process 300 million orders by the end of 2025.
PDQ's funding and growth comes at a time when many are focused on what will happen to the e-commerce industry as a whole.
After a very strong period of rapid growth after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies and investors are anticipating a significant drop in demand as people return to brick-and-mortar stores for shopping. I saw it happening. It didn't help that inflation and economic uncertainty also meant people were less willing to buy.
For those looking for an optimistic outlook, recent numbers for the latest holiday shopping period were mixed. Although there were some very strong shopping days, these periods were punctuated and actually recorded lower growth than forecasters had expected.
However, companies like PDQ could still benefit. The ability to offer shoppers better discounts without significantly cutting into retailers' profits may be more welcome than ever.
The core problem that PDQ is trying to solve is a typical problem for independent e-commerce retailers.
E-commerce companies are likely retailers at heart and are not themselves technology experts. Some people who really want to outsource the technology layer of their business may choose a solution like Amazon. You can list your products on Amazon's marketplace and let its search algorithms, fulfillment, shipping, loyalty programs, and other tools handle the rest. A paid procedure will be carried out. These days, there are other third-party options as well, such as Temu, Instagram, and TikTok.
PDQ targets e-commerce companies that want to build their own online presence. This speaks to the independent spirit that has fueled the growth of companies like Shopify, which helps people easily build online storefronts, and Stripe, which manages customer transactions.
PDQ is working on another important area in its chain. It's how these sites configure and manage your broader checkout experience. This may include shipping charges, methods, and other types of deals to entice shoppers to buy more.
Avi Moskowitz, CEO and founder of PDQ, said he first came up with the idea for the startup from his own experience starting and running a craft brewing business in Israel.
The company, BeerBazaar, was founded in 2015, and in early 2020, Moskowitz decided it made sense to build a website, “without any idea what was going to happen.” The company used Shopify to do this.
Then, just a few weeks later, COVID-19 arrived.
“Suddenly we were shipping hundreds of orders a day, and some days we received over 1,000 orders,” he recalls. What should have felt like an exciting boom in business quickly turned into a nightmare. Both his company and its customers were “shocked that the Amazon-like experience we were used to was no longer there.”
Moskowitz and his team set out to solve this problem so that Beer Bazaar gives users the same sense of trust and security that they get when shopping on Amazon. Predictable information about shipping charges and their costs likely suggests lower shipping rates. Please either pay for shipping or remove it completely.
“When we started solving problems ourselves, we realized that we actually needed a platform, like a lot of the tools that were starting to emerge in e-commerce, like personalization and optimization and A/B testing. ” he said. “This is not about specific features; being able to optimize checkout means being able to manage the entire customer journey, from the moment the customer enters the store to checkout, fulfillment, tracking, and delivery. I will.”
After building that platform, Moskowitz thought it was an idea strong enough to sell to others, and PDQ was born. Moskowitz said the company currently only integrates with online stores built on Shopify, but plans to use some of the funding to expand to include other sites.
Moskowitz said PDQ's main goal is personalization, “basically ensuring every shopper has a checkout experience that's right for them.”
If a retailer already has order management, delivery, and payment partners, coordinate those activities on a single platform. For customers who do not process orders in-house or have a fulfillment partner (third-party logistics or 3PL partner), PDQ supports a wide range of major carriers (USPS, DHL, FedEx, UPS, etc.), as well as a variety of Small shipping companies and other 3PL providers are also available.
Other areas the tool offers include checkout, post-purchase order tracking and protection, and A/B testing if retailers want to try different offers at checkout.
Of course, there are other companies working on this aspect of e-commerce flows, including Shopify itself and the many partners that PDQ integrates with. As with other aspects of e-commerce aimed at addressing highly fragmented markets, multiple players are likely to build powerful services that coexist.
The real competition is platforms like Amazon, platforms that offer retailers another option. That means moving to a larger marketplace to avoid having to think about independent products entirely.
The company has raised $38 million to date, but did not disclose the valuation for this latest round, led by new investor Peakspan Capital. Previous backers TLV Partners and Moneta also participated.