Huub, a Portuguese technologic start-up that operates in the fashion supply-chain sector, has signed a deal with Maersk, a world leader in the overseas transportation of goods and one of the biggest global groups in the logistic sector registering about US$40 billion annual revenues.
Huub offers a logistic platform that helps fashion brands connecting with e-commerce sites, providing a full range of logistics solutions including production follow-up, picking, storage, stock management, order fulfillment, packing and shipping. Huub’s algorithms also analyze sales to determine replenishment strategies and prevent understocking.
The agreement with Maersk for a €1.5 million investment is the first one carried ahead by the Danish multinational in a Portuguese start-up, as part of a total of €4.35 million of early stage investments.
Luis Roque, CEO of Huub, recently explained the company’s future plans.
What is Huub specialized in?
Huub handles the entire supply chain of fashion brands. From production follow-up to deliveries and returns, the whole lifecycle of the collection is managed by Huub. This means also: receptions, stock management, documentation, fulfillment, customs, pack and ship, tracking and customer support. Everything is handled by one single partner: Huub. We do not do sourcing, only the inbound of the production.
Then we created a platform that makes everything mentioned above visible for our brands that can control the operation without the work of actually doing things. We also provide b2b sales platform and b2c integrations to connect logistics and sales under our platform. Everything is connected.
What are Huub's next projects? Are you also thinking to launch your own e-commerce? Or are you simply focused on supporting brands and companies in logistic services?
We fulfill all our brands e-commerce solutions and we are connected with the most important players like Shopify or Woocommerce. We don’t see the need to create it in-house. We will support it in logistics but in the business overall with sales analysis, recommendations and similar service.
Why should a company or a brand choose to work with your company? What differentiates you from other couriers?
Carriers just distribute. We handle everything in an integrated, efficient and scalable solution. Without Huub brands you would need to connect with several different companies to have a similar solution and that would never be as effective and cost-wise.
How many companies or brands have already started working with you? Can you name some of them?
As a reference I would say our German kids’ premium fashion brands like Noé & Zoë Berlin, Liilu or Monkind. On sports fashion definitely the biggest surf and swimwear brand in Portugal, Deeply, part of the Sonae corporation.
How will Huub close 2019?
It plans to close 2019 with a revenue of €3.5 million, which represents a growth of around 200% compared to 2018. The startup has also seen a 47% increase in brands in the first half of the year over 2018 as a whole. We plan to grow our team to 85 employees by the end of the year.
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