FULFILLMENT
The 3PL that keeps buying 3PLs just raised $400 million
Stord went to the banks for a credit line and walked out with nearly double what it asked for. The Atlanta fulfillment company announced on October 8 that Citi led the $400 million facility, joined by five other banks. Add the $250 million Series F from May at a $3 billion valuation, and Stord has lined up $650 million this year. The money will fund new fulfillment buildings and robotics and AI work at Stord Labs.
Stord runs nearly 100 fulfillment locations for more than 1,000 brands, moving more than $15 billion a year in merchandise, and says its packages reach one in four U.S. households. Its revenue run rate is approaching $1 billion after growing tenfold in four years. It's private, and FreightWaves notes it didn't disclose profit or the loan's pricing and maturity.
A good chunk of that network came from big companies selling their small-brand fulfillment arms to Stord: Pitney Bowes in 2024, UPS in 2025, and CEVA this January, with the last two adding 33 warehouses between them. CEVA is the same company that just took over FedEx Supply Chain in Edition 66. Stord also hired a new CFO, Bill Zerella, who has run finance at three public companies, Fitbit included, plus a chief revenue officer from Box, though it hasn't announced any IPO plans.
What this means for you: Stord pays interest on whatever it draws from that $400 million, and it plans to cover it with volume in its buildings, so expect sharp Stord quotes when your mid-size DTC clients come up for renewal this winter. Stord sells software and network together, from the delivery promise at checkout to returns, which is hard to beat on tech, so lead with what a 100-building network can't give a smaller brand: custom kitting and wholesale compliance work, plus a person who picks up when a client calls.
PEAK
America used Prime Day to buy toilet paper
Amazon's October sale ran Tuesday and Wednesday, and Adobe counted $9.86 billion in U.S. online spending across all retailers over those two days, up 8.5% from last year. That's a hair under the $9.9 billion Adobe forecast, which we covered in Edition 65.
Numerator tracked more than 80,000 orders, and the top sellers were protein shakes, Lysol wipes, toilet paper, Dawn dish spray, and Dunkin' Refreshers. Two-thirds of what people bought cost under $20, and the average order came in under $49. More than half of households placed two or more separate orders, and nearly three in four shoppers told Numerator inflation was one reason they shopped the sale.
Adobe had household cleaning and paper products selling 55% above the September average, with hygiene and pet food close behind. Electronics jumped 85%, headphones and speakers 300%, and Halloween costumes 610%. In Edition 65, Adobe expected shoppers to use Cyber Week to stock up on basics, and many started in October. Numerator also found intent to shop Black Friday and Cyber Monday down 4 and 5 points from last year, and more than half of shoppers compared prices elsewhere first, mostly at Walmart and Target, both of which ran competing sales this week.
What this means for you: A pack of wipes costs you the same to pick, pack, and ship as a pair of headphones, so check what your consumables clients' average order value did this week and whether your per-order minimums still cover your cost at that ticket. Push those clients toward bundles and multi-packs before Cyber Week, since one order with three items is cheaper for both of you than three orders with one, and half of households split their buying across orders. Anything that sold through in two days needs replenishment booked now so it's back on the shelf before Thanksgiving, and with warehouse space as tight as it is right now, give the client a receiving appointment instead of letting them ship whenever. Numerator's Black Friday number only measures intent, so keep your seasonal headcount and schedule November in flexible blocks you can shift week to week.
ECOMMERCE
Walmart wants to ship your clients’ Walmart orders itself
Walmart opened its fifth next-generation fulfillment center on October 8: a 900,000-square-foot building in Stockton, California. The other four are in Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas, so this is the first one out West. Besides Walmart's own online orders, it'll fulfill items for Marketplace sellers through Walmart Fulfillment Services, the program where Walmart stores and ships a seller's inventory. Sellers send in cases, robots bring totes of product to the pickers, and Walmart says packers can work four orders at once and get them out in under 30 minutes. FreightWaves notes e-commerce now accounts for 23% of Walmart's sales.
Two days earlier, ShipStation launched Ship with Walmart, which lets Marketplace sellers buy labels at Walmart's negotiated rates from the same dashboard as their Amazon, Shopify, and TikTok Shop orders, with up to $100 of protection on lost packages that shipped on time. ShipStation didn't name the carriers or the discount size.
A few weeks ago, Amazon offered to ship your clients' Walmart orders from their FBA inventory (Edition 65). Now Walmart has a West Coast building for those same sellers and its own rates inside software plenty of 3PLs already ship from.
What this means for you: Pull each client's Walmart orders a month and where those customers are. If a client's Walmart buyers are mostly in California while you ship from New Jersey, WFS will win, so have the conversation about splitting inventory or adding a western node before their Walmart rep does. If you run client Walmart orders through ShipStation, find out whether those labels can be bought on the client's account inside your instance, and compare them to your rate card before the client does. If a client asks why they shouldn't just let Walmart ship Walmart orders and Amazon ship Amazon orders, walk them through what splitting one inventory across three networks looks like right before Q4.
Quick hits
WAREHOUSING
September's drop in empty warehouse space was the steepest since March 2022. The Logistics Managers' Index space reading fell from 53.5 to 39.3, with smaller companies feeling it more than big ones. This year's holiday freight arrived late, and most of it is sitting with wholesalers and distributors, who usually start pushing it down to retailers around mid-October; NRF's Global Port Tracker shows imports dropping below last year in November. If a client wants to park overflow "just through the holidays," put January's storage rate in writing now, before those pallets turn into aged inventory.
REFUNDS
A trade court just gave importers who never filed for tariff refunds a way back in. On October 8, the Court of International Trade certified a class of every importer that paid IEEPA duties between February 1, 2025, and February 19, 2026 and hasn't sued on its own. The court said the importers who haven't used CBP's refund portal are mostly small, and that without the class, about $30 billion would stay with the government. Nothing pays out yet, since the parties meet October 13 and the Justice Department is still appealing the broader refund order. CBP started paying refunds on finally liquidated entries on October 6, but only to importers who sued and filed their importer of record number by July 30; Levi's booked about $80 million in refunds and is putting roughly $20 million of it into distribution and logistics. If you ship for small brands that imported during those months, ask whether they ever filed, and if they didn't, tell them about this.
LABOR
UPS is hiring 100,000 seasonal workers, and some get an offer in under seven minutes. The jobs run October through December and cover sorting and moving packages, driver helpers, and seasonal drivers using their own cars. UPS is also adding Protected Delivery, where the recipient has to give the driver a PIN before an eligible package changes hands, and expects to deliver more than 4 billion RFID-tagged packages by year-end. Warehouses shed jobs in September (Edition 66), but you're still recruiting from the same pool as a company that hires in seven minutes, so make seasonal offers the same day someone applies. If you ship high-value goods, ask your UPS rep whether Protected Delivery works on your account before your clients ask you.
WEATHER
Hurricane Isaias shut the Port of Mobile for a day. The first hurricane to reach the U.S. this year hit the Alabama and Florida Panhandle coast Friday evening as a Category 3 storm with winds near 120 mph, with 4 to 8 inches of rain forecast across southern Alabama, the Panhandle and southwest Georgia. Mobile closed to vessels and cargo handling Friday and returned to its regular schedule Saturday. If you have clients with containers routing through Mobile or freight moving across the Gulf Coast this week, plan for a few days of shuffled appointments.
REAL ESTATE
Amazon paid $195 million for a two-story Chicago warehouse that's sat empty since it was built. The West Town building, finished in 2024 with truck docks on both floors, becomes Amazon's second same-day site in the city, with fulfillment and delivery under one roof. Amazon told the Sun-Times it expects 200 jobs averaging about $24 an hour, with groceries and pharmacy driving demand, and an opening in late 2027 or early 2028. If you run a building in Chicago, that $24 is the number your applicants will quote back to you.
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