Chicago-Based Supply Chain Platform ShipBob Opens New Innovation Center in Fort Worth

The Fort Worth facility, along with a new one ShipBob has opened in North Aurora, Illinois, will allow the company to better serve its e-commerce merchants "by tripling our operational space while combining our receiving, fulfillment innovation, and sortation centers into single facilities, paving the way for future growth and continued innovation," the company's supply chain officer said.

Global supply chain and fulfillment platform ShipBob has expanded into sprawling new “state-of-the-art facilities” in Fort Worth and North Aurora, Illinois.

Chicago-based ShipBob, a platform for small-business and mid-market e-commerce merchants, said the facilities are called ShipBob Innovation Centers. Each is larger than 250,000 square feet in size and serves as the inventory receiving hubs within their respective regions that feed into ShipBob’s nearby spoke sites, which primarily focus on fulfilling direct-to-consumer and retail orders quickly.

“These new facilities allow us to better serve our merchants by tripling our operational space while combining our receiving, fulfillment innovation, and sortation centers into single facilities, paving the way for future growth and continued innovation,” Melissa Nick, chief supply chain officer of ShipBob, said in a statement. “These technology, network, and transportation enhancements enable ShipBob to move inventory quickly and more efficiently from hub to last-mile and the customer’s doorstep with fewer errors and more visibility for all parties.”

Fort Worth center to consolidate ShipBob’s North Texas ops

According to CoStar, ShipBob plans to consolidate all its North Texas operations—including a Grapevine fulfillment center it opened in August 2023—into its new Fort Worth facility, which is located at a newly completed industrial building at 11401 Harmon Road.

ShipBob’s automated carrier sort machine, seen at another facility, automatically scans each package and is connected to the company’s proprietary warehouse management system. [Video still: ShipBob]

Innovation Center features

The two new Innovation Centers in the company’s fulfillment network are launching with the latest ShipBob technology. The Fort Worth and North Aurora hubs serve as both inbound receiving hubs and outbound sortation centers for all spoke sites in their respective regions.

ShipBob said the Innovation Centers also consolidate volume for its middle-mile network, where inventory is distributed to other regions of the country to be fulfilled closer to more end customers and packages are routed for zone skipping.

Using automated sort centers for outbound packages and consolidating shipments from all fulfillment centers within a region, ShipBob executes the carrier handoff with much later injection times and more frequent carrier pickups throughout the day, including weekends, the company said. This leads to greater carrier selection, better scan success, fewer lost packages, a decreased need to chase down tracking details, and most importantly, faster delivery speeds, ShipBob said.

ShipBob said that its new facilities offer more space for customized merchant solutions and to test new innovations, have additional dock doors and a more streamlined setup, increase labor capacity to manage order spikes more effectively, and provide temperature-controlled space for inventory.

The new, larger facilities materially increase ShipBob’s volume throughput for merchants and will also increase ShipBob’s headcount and result in additional growth opportunities and advancement for current employees to continue their careers with ShipBob, the company said.