Making freight more affordable and reliable for growing eCommerce brands
Wayflyer was founded to help eCommerce businesses grow and break through the barriers they face as they scale. We started with our Funder product, offering flexible funding to eCommerce founders at the best rates.
But we’re all too aware that access to funding isn’t the only challenge causing headaches and keeping founders up at night.
Freight costs have skyrocketed in recent years, and financially eCommerce brands are feeling the pinch.
Data from Drewry shows that the price of a 40ft container has risen from under $2,000 in November 2019 to more than $7,500 in June 2022. (Prices peaked at over $10,000 in September 2021.)
This rise can be explained quite simply: eCommerce has taken over the world.
In 2021, eCommerce accounted for an estimated 19.6 percent of retail sales worldwide, up from 13.6% in 2019, and forecasts indicate that by 2025, eCommerce could make up close to a quarter of global retail sales.
With more consumers buying more products, demand for sea freight is outpacing shipping container availability causing this steep rise in costs. For growing eCommerce businesses, the cost of freight has a significant impact on cash flows and margins.
Introducing Wayflyer Freighter
The next step in our mission is to help eCommerce brands solve the freight challenges that are slowing down growth and rescuing margins. To do this, we’re launching Wayflyer Freighter — a new product offering we’re currently testing with a range of eCommerce brands.
In the messy world of eCommerce supply chains, Wayflyer Freighter exists to simplify inventory shipments and reduce costs for fast-growing businesses.
We’ve created a network of reliable, best-in-class freight forwarders that we work with to source shipping prices for our customers. By negotiating rates on behalf of our customers as a whole, we can leverage our network and the aggregated volume of goods to unlock more affordable prices that individual brands would be unable to negotiate on their own.
Wayflyer Freighter customers will also have access to our tracking dashboard enabling complete visibility of every part of the freight process — from delivery at origin port and its journey at sea, all the way to destination delivery and delivery to your warehouse. This reduces headaches and time spent chasing up shipments, giving you more time to focus on growth.
“Before using Wayflyer Freighter our approach to Freight shipping was disjointed and there were too many players involved in the process."
“Before using Wayflyer Freighter our approach to Freight shipping was disjointed and there were too many players involved in the process,” explains Oliver Shurville, Founder and CEO of TentBox, an early Freighter customer.
