Stord: The Cloud Supply Chain Model That’s Quietly Reshaping Fulfillment

“You don’t need more warehouses. You need more flexibility. Stord figured that out early.”

The idea of a “cloud supply chain” used to sound like marketing fluff. I’ve seen my fair share of logistics rebrands, and most of them are just rewrapped 3PLs with prettier dashboards. But Stord is different. What they’re building—and what they’ve actually operationalized—is a true combination of software and physical infrastructure that gives mid-sized brands the kind of logistics flexibility only enterprise players used to have.

That’s not theory. That’s real freight moving, real orders being picked and packed, and real brands skipping the 12-month warehouse contracts and getting same-week SLAs.

From Rigid Contracts to Elastic Fulfillment

Before Stord, scaling logistics meant signing contracts with a single 3PL, praying they could handle both retail and e-commerce, and settling for clunky onboarding. And when something changed—seasonality, new channels, unexpected growth—you were stuck. Inventory in the wrong place. No backup warehouse. No transparency. And no flexibility.

The alternative was duct-taping together a handful of regional 3PLs, none of which talked to each other, and hoping you could build a functional OMS on your own. That works—until it doesn’t.

Stord offered a third path: keep your logistics decentralized, but make the control centralized. One interface, one SLA, and access to a fulfillment network that flexes with your brand.

What They Built

Founded in 2017, Stord is built around a simple idea: logistics should be elastic. The company operates a network of over 400 warehouse and fulfillment partners across the U.S., layered with proprietary software that gives brands real-time visibility into their operations. Inventory syncs across nodes, orders are automatically routed based on location and SLA, and everything—from freight to returns—is managed in one dashboard.

You don’t need to own a warehouse. You don’t need to contract five of them. You just plug into Stord, and the rest is handled behind the scenes.

It’s fulfillment-as-infrastructure.

Who’s Using It—and Why It Works

Stord’s sweet spot isn’t the startup shipping out of their garage. It’s the mid-sized brand that’s grown too fast for Shopify plugins, but doesn’t have the time—or desire—to build an internal logistics team.

I’m talking about brands doing $50M–$500M in annual revenue. Teams that are expanding into retail, running TikTok campaigns that spike demand overnight, and dealing with DTC and B2B orders in the same week. These brands need reliability, speed, and a single source of truth. That’s what Stord gives them.

They’ve served companies like Ridge Wallet, TULA Skincare, and Sakara—brands that care deeply about experience, shipping speed, and margin control. These aren’t low-volume lifestyle brands. They’re operators. And they use Stord to act like they have an enterprise-grade logistics team—without hiring one.

Where the Value Really Comes From

What makes Stord powerful isn’t just the warehouse access. It’s the way they’ve built their software.

You get real-time inventory visibility across every fulfillment node. You see which orders are being picked, packed, delayed, or rerouted. You can offer DTC shipping from two-day zones, retail routing with EDI compliance, and returns with disposition rules—all in one place. The interface is intuitive, the logic is prebuilt, and the onboarding is weeks, not quarters.

That’s rare. Most 3PLs are great at storing product—but they fall apart when you ask them to give you control. Stord hands you that control without handing you the complexity.

The Business Model: How They Make It Work

Stord’s model is hybrid. They generate revenue from fulfillment services—warehousing, pick and pack, shipping—but also from software. Brands pay to use their OMS, WMS, and integration stack, even if they’re not using Stord’s network.

The value proposition is clear: manage your logistics stack from a single interface, with built-in routing, SLA tracking, and carrier coordination. And as brands grow into more nodes, more channels, and more complexity, Stord scales with them. That’s not just convenience. That’s retention.

Funding, Scale, and What’s Next

Since launch, Stord has raised over $200 million from firms like Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, and Salesforce Ventures. Their valuation passed $1 billion in 2022, and they’ve used that capital to deepen both their tech and their physical network.

They acquired Fulfilltopia in 2022 to speed up onboarding and own more operational control. And they’ve reportedly tripled revenue from 2020 to 2022—growth driven not by branding hype, but by real demand from brands caught between ecommerce complexity and retail expansion.

In short, they saw where the market was going—and they built for it.

Final Thought: Infrastructure That Doesn’t Lock You In

What I like most about Stord is that they don’t want to be your forever warehouse. They want to be your elastic layer. You can spin up fulfillment on the East Coast for Q4. You can turn it off when you don’t need it. You can route wholesale differently than DTC. You stay in control.

For operators trying to scale fast without burning margin—or sleep—that’s the kind of infrastructure that matters.

Stord didn’t just build software. They built logistics that flex.