France Delivery Company Cubyn Raises $13.5M To Help Online Retailers

Launched in France in 2014, Cubyn, a company that wants to help online retailers manage their inventory better, raised $13.5 million in a round led by DN Capital. Its total funding so far is at $21.8 million, according to Crunchbase.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

The round will help it launch “Cubyn Fulfillment,” an offering meant to help retailers refurbish their inventory across different ecommerce shops with the help of software and services.

Right now, Cubyn “guarantees the shipment of all your orders the same day, regardless of quantity or destination,” according to its website. Basically, the company wants to help retailers both distribute their inventory in a timely fashion, but also manage those goods more broadly, from refurbishment to quality assurance.

Cubyn told TechCrunch that their typical customer is an e-merchant that works with different sales channels (think Amazon, eBay, etc), and ships between 500 to 50,000 orders per month.

The company currently has 60 people, and will almost double that by the end of the year. It has processed over 2.5 million shipments since beginning, it tells Crunchbase News.

Amazon is responsible for half of the online retail transactions – so it makes sense that companies are popping up to both work and combat the logistics behemoth. Companies like London-based ZenCargo, for example, helps with shipment of goods to Amazon fulfillment centers. Bringg, which we’ve reported on in the past, claims that it can “provide the tools that enable any company to match [Amazon’s] logistics excellence” using software.

“Amazon marketplace is the fastest growing channel for their e-commerce. But as Amazon can’t manage 100% of the logistics of their merchants, they struggle to offer a good service level across merchants,” said Pierre Canard, the head of marketing for the company.  “Our solution is very complementary because it helps them in this mission of offering the best customer experience.”

As Amazon expands in France, Cubyn, which first started as a logistics company, appears to be pivoting beyond pickup and delivery with this refurbishment play. It’s a move that makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s not doubling down on its initial business pitch, a company focused on logistics and delivery. It hired two Amazon alum: the previous head of Amazon Prime, and the previous manager of logistics and transport of Amazon France.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias

Editor’s note: The story has been updated with further commentary from Cubyn.