Deliverr, headquartered in San Francisco, is on a mission to enable any merchant, regardless of size, to delight their customers with fast and cost-effective fulfillment.
Connecting
Deliverr to storefronts, marketplaces, POSs, WMSs, ERPs, and custom applications
Key Workflows
Order flow, inventory synchronization, API, order routing, bundles and kits
Deliverr, acquired by Flexport in 2023, is an undisputed technology-forward fulfillment leader. Their proprietary machine learning algorithms and intelligent nationwide warehouse network optimize inventory allocation and shipping methods so sellers can increase sales, maximize return on ad spend, and offer 2-day and next-day shipping.
Sellers can create a Deliverr account, send inventory into the Deliverr network, and start offering 2-day and next day delivery in as little as one week.
Starting fast and gearing up for the journey ahead
From the start, it was clear that Deliverr’s technology-forward fulfillment solutions were in high demand. By August 2019, only two years since their founding, Deliver was providing fast and cost-effective fulfillment services for thousands of sellers. The majority of these early customers were SMB merchants who used Deliverr to offer 2-day and next day delivery for Walmart Marketplace orders. Deliverr was able to close these deals quickly because they had built a native Walmart Marketplace integration that enabled customers to seamlessly onboard Deliverr’s fulfillment services with Walmart Marketplace.
Deliverr found product-market fit by working with Walmart Marketplace merchants, but they needed to expand their addressable market in order to build a thriving and defensible business. This meant expanding their fulfillment footprint within existing customers and moving up-market to service larger enterprise merchants and brands.
The good news; Deliver was already receiving a large amount of inbound interest from larger enterprise merchants and brands, and their existing customers wanted Deliverr to handle more of their fulfillment business.
The bad news; Deliverr wasn’t turning this interest into closed won deals. In August 2019, only a small number of enterprise merchants and brands were Deliverr customers, and their existing customers rarely expanded Deliverr usage beyond marketplace order fulfillment.
Integrations and connectivity holding the business back
Prospects and existing customers wanted to use Deliverr to fulfill orders they received from their ERPs, order management systems, storefronts, POSs and custom applications, but Deliverr didn’t have integrations, or a way to connect, with these applications.
“Connectivity was directly limiting our ability to close deals and expand our addressable market.”
Deliverr’s sales reps were stuck. Connectivity gaps were forcing them to turn away eager-to-purchase prospects and expansion deals. Attempts to win these deals, by referring customers to listing tool partners or stitching together temporary solutions didn’t work. Temporary solutions took precious time away from selling and the implementations frequently broke. Listing tool partners couldn’t solve Deliverr’s connectivity problems because connectivity was not their core business – listings were!
To unblock sales, Deliverr needed to connect with 100s of new selling channels, marketplaces, order management systems, ERPs, accounting systems, and point of sale systems. Larger enterprise merchants and brands often required the ability to connect custom applications to Deliverr, so the team also needed to provide access to an open API and SDKs.
While integrations and connectivity were the thorniest sales blockers, they weren’t the only ones. Many prospects wanted to use Deliverr in parallel with another 3PL to optimize various aspects of their fulfillment architecture, which meant that Deliverr needed to build order routing functionality so customers could send orders between Deliverr and other 3PLs. Customers were also pressing Deliverr to provide additional features, like the ability to support bundles and kits, which many other 3PLs weren’t offering.
Deliverr quickly realized that building a handful, let alone 100s, of new integrations, order routing functionality, and the additional capabilities customers wanted would take a significant amount of time and require a large investment of engineering resources. Deliverr’s engineering team was already working at maximum capacity. Any engineering resources they reprioritized to develop, test, and maintain new integrations would directly detract from Deliverr’s ability to build their core, market leading, 2-day and next day delivery offering.
Deliverr needed a solution to their connectivity problem.
They needed a connectivity solution to unblock sales, expand the use cases they could solve, and shorten the time it took to onboard customer’s order sources. At the same time, Deliverr did not want a connectivity solution to require an extensive investment of their development, project management, or support resources. They urgently needed a solution because every day that a prospect or customer couldn’t connect an application to Deliverr was an opportunity for a competitor to win that business and take market share.
Solving commerce connectivity with Pipe17
An enterprise prospect approached Deliverr with a common use case, to use their fulfillment services for a variety of SKU and selling-channel specific orders. However, this prospect used NetSuite ERP as their source of truth and would only work with fulfillment partners who integrated with Netsuite. To win this deal Deliverr needed to connect with NetSuite, but the engineering team couldn’t drop what they were working on to build a NetSuite integration in time for sales to win this deal. By happenstance, Deliverr had been introduced to Pipe17 earlier in the month, so they turned to the Pipe17 team for help.
“We knew we needed to do something but it was too much work for us, Pipe17 provided a great solution.”
Within two weeks of starting to work together, Pipe17 helped Deliverr seamlessly integrate with NetSuite ERP. The Deliverr team closed their deal, and just 5 days after the contract was signed the customer’s NetSuite ERP was connected, inventory onboarded into the fulfillment network, and orders were flowing seamlessly from NetSuite to Deliverr for fulfillment. Being able to connect with NetSuite was a huge win for Deliverr, but that was only the first of many successes the Deliverr and Pipe17 partnership would provide.
During this first engagement, Pipe17 built a gateway connector to Deliverr’s API. With an API gateway connector built, Deliverr could now connect to every commerce application in the Pipe17 connector catalog. Overnight, Deliverr gained the ability to integrate with ERPs like NetSuite and Odoo, marketplaces like Wayfaire and Etsy, and platforms like BigCommerce and WooCommerce. Not only did Deliverr gain integration access to every application in Pipe17’s existing catalog, but they can also seamlessly integrate with every new application that Pipe17 adds to their connector catalog in perpetuity. Having the gateway connector to Deliverr’s API built also enabled Deliverr’s customers to use Pipe17 to access Deliverr through a single 3PL API and easily integrate their custom applications directly to Deliverr.
“Partnering with Pipe17 immediately broadened the range of ecommerce applications that can be seamlessly integrated with Deliverr.”
Deliverr was thrilled that partnering with Pipe17 had enabled bi-directional order, fulfillment, inventory and product catalog integration with ERPs, order management systems, accounting systems, point of sale systems, storefronts, marketplaces, and custom applications. Deliverr had found their connectivity solution with Pipe17.
But partnering with Pipe17 enabled more than just connectivity for Deliverr. The Deliverr team was able to use Pipe17 to handle common problems with order routing, SKU mapping, bundle and kit disaggregation, and to win deals with customers who wanted to use Deliverr as one part of a multi-channel fulfillment solution.
“We close more deals and deliver higher value solutions for our customers thanks to our partnership with Pipe17.”
It’s been more than 2 years since Deliverr and Pipe17 first started their partnership, and the relationship is more turnkey now than ever before. Pipe17 is the default connectivity choice for Deliverr customers that have a heterogenous post checkout environment.
“Our team, and more importantly our customers, have been very happy with Pipe17.”
Deliverr’s fulfillment footprint expansion took off when customers could swap and add new integrations to Deliverr in a matter of minutes, without developer or IT assistance, using Pipe17. Deliverr uses Pipe17’s connectivity hub and open API to close more deals with large enterprise merchants and brands. Deliverr has also decreased the time and costs to onboard customers while simultaneously improving retention because Pipe17 provides Deliverr customer referrals with affordable, or free for Enterprise plans, onboarding and ongoing Enterprise support.
Pipe17 for 3PLs
Pipe17’s commerce connectivity hub was the perfect solution for Deliverr, and it could be for your 3PL too. With Pipe17, your 3PL can turn connectivity from a painful blocker into a competitive advantage with:
- Streamlined connectivity for selling channels (like BigCommerce and Magento), headless platforms (like Fabric and Chord), marketplaces (like Etsy and Wayfair), point of sale systems (like Square and Lightspeed), order and inventory management systems (like Cin7 and Brightpearl), financials and accounting systems (like Quickbooks and Xero), and ERPs (like NetSuite and Acumatica)
- Order routing to enable customers to easily add your 3PL to their existing fulfillment architecture without changing their processes or workflows
- Bundles and kit functionality to support customers from selling channels to fulfillment, and back, so they can increase sales and improve margins without a fulfillment headache
