4/4/2023 0 Comments Disruptor a mess o troubleWhen a ship ran aground in the Suez Canal last March, Petersen demystified the situation on social media and in interviews, even publishing a supply chain explainer picture book for kids. shores, booking special planes to ship masks by the millions while rallying the public to donate funds. Early in lockdown, he sent hundreds of thousands of units of personal protective equipment to Wuhan, China-then set his team to routing much more back when the virus reached U.S. Petersen also hasn’t been shy about building his public image. For businesses facing inventory crunches, it built an app for truckers to tap into and learn where they’ll be needed 10 days in advance. It helped set up a private rail ramp in Iowa for goods coming from the West Coast to avoid Chicago congestion. It’s rerouting lighter, higher-value products like Everlane’s popular sweaters from sea to air. Flexport is combing through customer data trying to fill each precious container more completely (most ship only 70% full). (If Forbes valued Petersen’s stake using the price of Flexport shares on the secondary markets, he’d already be there, worth just over $1.1 billion.)īut Petersen doesn’t want to be seen as a pandemic profiteer, getting rich as his customers pay unprecedented prices. Add in a prolific angel investment portfolio and part ownership of a profitable side business, and he’s closer to $750 million, knocking on the door of billionaire status. Forbes estimates Petersen’s 9% stake in Flexport is worth $650 million, after our standard 10% private-company discount. The newest: Andreessen Horowitz, the prominent venture capital firm that joined Founders Fund, e-commerce standout Shopify and others in arming Petersen with a fresh $900 million war chest at an $8 billion valuation in January. ![]() No surprise, then, that powerful investors keep piling in. SEA SLUGS Trans-pacific shipping costs, which reached an eye-popping $20,500 for a 40-foot container in September, are finally in decline. Last year, the San Francisco–based firm generated its first profit, posting net income of $37 million. Sales reached $3.3 billion in 2021, up from $1.3 billion in 2020 and $670 million the year before (Flexport passes about 80% of its revenue directly to its shipping partners). ![]() adults found that 87% reported being negatively affected by shipping struggles half said they’d canceled an order in recent months.įor Flexport, it all means business is booming. Average folks who never gave a thought to the global supply chain are paying attention now. now take more than a month longer to arrive than they did in 2019, while the cost of shipping a container has soared from under $2,000 pre-pandemic to more than $20,000 last summer (the current price is around $15,000). Americans spent 20% more on goods last fall than in February 2020. Demand is at a record high-global trade volumes rose 8.3% in 2021, according to Allianz subsidiary Euler Hermes. In the U.S., it’s a $230 billion business, good for 1.1% of national GDP. Third-party logistics, of which freight forwarding is a big part, amounts to nearly $1 trillion. ![]() Global spending on logistics reached $9 trillion in 2020, about 11% of the world’s gross domestic product, according to consultancy Armstrong & Associates.
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