The e-retailer and marketplace has opened Newegg Staffing offices in the Midwest and on the East Coast, adding to its home staffing office in Southern California.

Electronics retailer and marketplace Newegg Inc. lately has ventured beyond selling products online by offering logistics, customer service and staffing services to other ecommerce-focused companies.

Newegg said last week it took a step further into ecommerce services by expanding its in-house staffing agency to the Midwest and the East Coast. Headquartered in the Los Angeles area, Newegg Staffing recently opened additional locations in Indianapolis and Edison, New Jersey. Now with three offices in different parts of the United States, Newegg says it is poised to help ecommerce companies scale-up their workforces for the holidays.

“Early success of our Southern California staffing operation caused us to accelerate our timeline to establish locations in other parts of the country,” said Anthony Chow, global CEO of Newegg, No. 26 in the 2020 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000. “Our strong foothold in three major distribution hubs uniquely positions Newegg Staffing to help ecommerce companies scale their workforces quickly and carefully.”

Newegg won’t disclose the companies it has worked with for staffing services. Newegg Staffing generates revenue by charging a markup on top of the hourly pay rate, or by charging a percentage of a candidate’s annual salary for direct hires, says Marina Berber, Newegg’s director of staffing.

Newegg Staffing launched in April 2020 to help logistics, manufacturing, clerical and supply chain management companies hire employees. The organization focuses on administrative, production and general staffing roles. Newegg Staffing works with companies of all sizes and helps with direct hires, temporary roles, executive positions and seasonal help. The organization demonstrated steady growth since its inception, with weekly revenue in late-June up nearly 2,000% compared with early April.

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“Having fine-tuned the staffing process internally for nearly two decades, Newegg is uniquely qualified to help other companies navigate the challenges associated with employee recruitment,” says Newegg’s director of staffing Marina Berber, who joined Newegg earlier this year to establish Newegg Staffing’s Los Angeles facility and to manage the organization’s expansion. “By scaling Newegg Staffing quickly in locales where we are already familiar with the local workforce, we offer a distinct advantage to our clients who want to attract highly qualified candidates.”

Ecommerce recruiter Jerry Bernhart of Bernhart Associates Executive Search LLC, says Newegg likely will find plenty of staffing business for ecommerce companies looking for employees to work on technology and back-end systems. “It appears they’re focusing more on back-end operations, where actually I think they’ll find plenty of opportunities. Those positions often require fewer years of experience, and there are lots of them.”

However, Bernhart says that from his experience, many marketing and executive roles are dominated by seasoned players who have been in their industries for many years and have built up a long list of contacts, so Newegg might not have as much business for those types of positions.

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Newegg, which launched in 2001 as a web-only electronics retailer, is also No. 33 in the ranking of Digital Commerce 360 Top 100 Online Marketplaces. The company over the past few years has started selling the expertise it’s gained from nearly 20 years as an online retailer to help merchants with logistics and customer service, in addition to staffing.

Newegg Logistics accepts and distributes inbound shipments of products for retailers, not just sellers on its marketplace. It also provides a range of additional services, including UPC and barcode tracking. Merchants can also use Newegg Logistics to pick, pack and fulfill their orders at Newegg warehouses through Shipped By Newegg, or SBN—a program similar to Fulfilled By Amazon. More than 10,000 sellers use Shipped By Newegg, ranging from small retailers selling only a couple of products a month to large merchants. Newegg Logistics also offers transportation management services, including shipment tracking, and advises retailers on the best mix of carriers to use.

Newegg’s customer service unit, Newegg Bridge, launched about 3 months ago and offers customer service via remote agents who work from home. It provides inbound and outbound customer service phone calls and automatic call routing to help direct consumers quickly to agents specialized in the customer service topic, such as warranty questions. Newegg Bridge also offers live chat via both agents and bots across 100 different languages.

Newegg isn’t the first online retailer to see the opportunity in selling services and technology. U.K. online grocer Ocado Plc., for example, operates an Ocado Technology unit that develops and sells robotics, machine learning, simulation, data science, forecasting and routing systems to other online grocers including U.K.-based Morrisons, Canada’s Sobey’s Inc. Groupe Casino (parent of Monoprix SA, No. 206 in the 2020 Digital Commerce 360 Europe 500) in France and The Kroger Co. (No. 13) in the U.S.

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