Amware CEO Outlines Moulton Logistics Acquisition

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Amware Fulfillment CEO Harry Drajpuch detailed Jan. 5 how the recent acquisition of Moulton Logistics helps bolster ongoing growth strategies.

Moulton is a third-party fulfillment company based in Los Angeles with a focus on e-commerce and the direct-response marketplace. Amware acquired the company Dec. 28 in an ongoing effort to expand its business operations and provide customers more specialty services.

Amware gained four additional fulfillment centers as part of the deal, three in the Los Angeles area and one in South Brunswick, N.J. That will add 500,000 square feet to its total warehousing space. Amware now has 15 facilities supporting its national fulfillment network.

Check out the latest news from Amware Fulfillment. #logistics #3PLhttps://t.co/hQIp7XQZoE — Amware Fulfillment (@AmwareLogistics) December 23, 2020

“We’re looking to be a total provider of fulfillment solutions whether it’s marketing, direct response, e-commerce, multilevel marketing,” Drajpuch told Transport Topics. “I think we’re really starting to increase the breadth of the services that we offer.”

He noted the acquisition also will help expand those services into new markets such as Dallas and Chicago.

The addition of call centers is another benefit of the acquisition.

 Drajpuch

“Moulton brings to us the ability to offer our customers call centers both here and abroad,” Drajpuch said. “Many of our customers have asked can you do that. They’re all using a call center to some degree and many are outsourcing it.”

He said the deal afforded Amware the opportunity to create a footprint in the direct-response space.

“We don’t do anything in the direct-response space,” Drajpuch said. “It is a big space, and there is a lot of volume in that space. It gives us an opportunity to learn the nuances of the business, learn the players.”

Amware provides order fulfillment services to help e-commerce and direct-selling companies scale fulfillment operations. The company does marketing, direct-to-consumer shipments, multilevel marketing, business-to-business and some big-box retail. Direct response essentially includes products that need to be ready to go at any time, such as what is sold on television shopping networks.

“As those products come on and people sell through those networks, they’re taking orders immediately and you’re filling those orders as soon as they get them,” Drajpuch said. “They ship them over and then you fulfill them as well.”

The Moulton acquisition is the latest step in an ongoing expansion plan that seeks to bolster specialty service offerings and geographic reach. Drajpuch noted there is a huge difference between the right fulfillment and fulfillment in general.

Amware provides order fulfillment services to help e-commerce and direct-selling companies scale fulfillment operations. (Amware)

“Our first acquisition was a little over two years ago with Iron Mountain Fulfillment,” he said. “This was marketing fulfillment. We didn’t do marketing fulfillment and although marketing fulfillment is technically B2B, it looks very similar to [business to customer] because you’re dealing with employees of companies.”

Drajpuch added that early on the expansion effort was primarily driven internally through investments. But he noted that is a slower and more costly process. When acquiring fulfillment companies in a specialty field, the process can go a lot faster. The other piece of the expansion efforts is to grow into more regions.

“From a geographic perspective, we’re not in the Pacific Northwest,” Drajpuch said. “We think that we can serve that very well from the locations that we’re in. One location that we would give serious thought to is Salt Lake City.”

Drajpuch noted acquisitions are beneficial to smaller fulfillment companies that are having trouble growing. He noted there is an increased desire by customers to have multiple inventory points because they want redundancy, to get closer to end users and ensure business continuity. This is driving industry consolidation but also making it harder for some smaller operations.

“Moulton will be integrated or absorb into the greater Amware,” Drajpuch said. “We’re excited to give the current customers at Moulton an option to be in another part of the country and going into multiple facilities. Moulton only had East and West Coast. There are already customers who have expressed interest in getting into Dallas and Chicago.”

Drajpuch expects the transition probably will take a little more than a year. Amware wants to figure out how to do that in a way that best works for customers and currently is in the planning phase.

Amware Fulfillment ranks No. 88 on the Transport Topics list of the largest dry storage warehousing providers in North America.

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