E-commerce services company CommerceHub is on its own as a public company, having completed its spinoff from Liberty Interactive Corp. It began trading Monday on the Nasdaq stock market.
“There’s a newfound sense of independence and we can leverage public currency, but in some ways not much has changed [with the spinoff],” Frank Poore, CommerceHub’s president and CEO said Tuesday. “We’re continuing to execute on our successful growth plan, satisfying our customers and building the size of our network.”
Revenue in 2015 grew 33.1% to $87.6 million from $65.8 million in 2014, the vendor said in April when it released sales and financial data ahead of the spinoff. CommerceHub was founded in 1997 and acquired by Liberty Interactive in 2010.
CommerceHub sells a cloud-based e-commerce fulfillment and marketing software platform for large retailers, online marketplaces and digital marketing channels as well as consumer brands, manufacturers and distributors. The vendor’s clients can list, categorize and activate products for sale on marketplaces operated by Amazon.com Inc., No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide; eBay Inc.; and Google Shopping, and they can update inventory and price data by web interface or direct file integration.
“We connect retailers and suppliers and delivery agents,” Poore says. “As e-commerce continues to expand and make up a larger share of our clients’ overall business, retailers and brands will need a streamlined solution to source, market, and deliver products to their customers more efficiently,” he says.
Many retailers, whether online-only or omnichannel, have realized what Amazon figured out a while ago: More products equals more sales, Poore says. Merchants are under pressure to increase SKU assortment, and CommerceHub helps them do that by connecting them with suppliers to create “virtual inventory” and handling the logistics to ensure the products are shipped quickly, he says. CommerceHub makes money from retailers and suppliers via monthly fees based on order volume or a percentage of gross merchandise value.
In January 2015, CommerceHub acquired Mercent, which helps merchants sell on digital marketplaces. The combined company handled $11.6 billion in gross merchandise value for its retailer and brand clients, which number 9,500 customers. CommerceHub is listed as the fulfillment vendor for 11 retailers in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 1000, including The Home Depot Inc.(No. 7); Costco Wholesale Corp. (No. 8); QVC Group (No. 9); and Kohl’s Corp. (No. 19).
Liberty Interactive has two divisions: QVC Group, which consists of online retailers QVC and zulily, and a portion of HSN Inc. (No. 25), and its Digital Commerce unit, Liberty Ventures Group, which includes e-retailers Bodybuilding.com, Evite and Right Start.
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