Acquisition adds to Stord’s CX suite to unlock new revenue, increase average order value 25%, & consumer retention for brands at unboxing with personalization.

Stord, a commerce-enablement leader providing high-volume fulfillment services and e-commerce technology for leading brands, announced its acquisition of Penny Black, a SaaS solution providing hyper-personalized post-purchase inserts to unlock new branded experiences, drive increased revenue, and foster improved retention.

This acquisition, and recent other addition to our Consumer Experience suite, provides our brands a tangible way to truly influence the consumer experience and improve bottom line revenue”
— Sean Henry, CEO and co-founder of Stord

Historically brands were extremely limited when it came to personalization during the fulfillment and delivery of orders. While brands have become accustomed to unique messaging and offers when marketing to potential customers online, that experience broke down in the physical world. Brands could only choose between white-glove inserts for a handful of key customers or generic inserts that could accommodate all customers and all buying habits, diluting the impact and effectiveness. Ultimately, this limited a brand’s ability to capitalize on a mostly-untapped marketing channel, hindered retention efforts, and prevented deepening loyalty with end consumers.

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With 71% of online shoppers expecting personalized communications and services, and 49% saying they are more likely to repeat shop after a personalized experience, brands need to capitalize on every opportunity available to create a differentiated and unique experience for each and every customer.

Over the near decade of Stord’s history, the guiding principle has remained the same – help brands grow revenue, reduce operational costs, and delight end consumers. These value propositions are what make Stord The Consumer Experience Company—leveling the playing field with prime. This has seen Stord expand to a fulfillment infrastructure spanning across North America, the United Kingdom and the EU, while delivering billions of products, and powering nearly $10 billion in commerce annually. This growth has allowed Stord to aggressively expand functionalities and invest heavily towards infusing AI systems across the entire process of bringing a product from the port, to the end consumer, anywhere in the world.

Penny Black was founded in 2021 and brought an innovative approach to deliver targeted, hyper-personalized branded inserts. With Penny Black, brands can easily provide specific product recommendations, unique coupon codes, custom videos, gift messages, or more addressed to an individual consumer based on marketing data and purchase history. These personalized inserts are printed on-demand at pack stations to drive a differentiated, branded unboxing experience. Current Penny Black customers have seen a 300% ROI within the first three months alongside a 25% AOV uplift.

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Penny Black’s direct integration with existing CRMs and CDPs empower brands to create instantaneous customizations based on details for each order and/or customer. Now, offers can be segmented by any number of marketing, purchase, or customer data points – order size or price, history, location, marketing campaigns, reviews, or more. New customers can now be offered a unique welcome message with information on the product and a discount for a complimentary product, while a customer with a higher order value could get a custom thank you note and a code for free shipping on their next purchase. These insights, once integrated into a broader ecosystem, can also power customized email, SMS, and future consumer outreach campaigns.

“By fusing the capabilities of Penny Black with Stord’s comprehensive Consumer Experience suite, order management system, and warehouse management system, Stord customers can elevate the physical unboxing experience and tap into additional consumer value,” said Craig Stewart, SVP of Product and Engineering at Stord. “This kind of personalization was previously only available for digital-only solutions, but has the added benefit of a 100% open rate during unboxing.”

The acquisition of Penny Black compliments the complete end-to-end consumer experience platform central to Stord’s mission, providing brands of all sizes unparalleled pre- and post-purchase capabilities in addition to the benefits of Stord’s economies of scale.

Penny Black’s technology joins dozens of purpose-built SaaS and AI solutions – including Shipment Protection, Post-Purchase Notifications, Expiration Management, and more – that help improve operational efficiencies, strategic investments, and visibility across every facet of complex e-commerce logistics. These efforts have propelled Stord to be The Consumer Experience Company for brands seeking to meld rapid fulfilment speeds, operational efficiencies, end-to-end visibility, and unequalled unboxing experiences.

“The consumer experience is the sum total of every element of your brand across marketing, product quality, fulfillment, returns, unboxing, and more. Every area a consumer experiences, either directly or indirectly, must be refined and improved if a DTC brand wants to thrive in a saturated and expensive ecosystem. This acquisition, and recent other addition to our Consumer Experience suite, provides our brands a tangible way to truly influence the consumer experience and improve bottom line revenue,” said Sean Henry, CEO and co-founder of Stord. “What is most exciting about the fusion of all of these interlocking fulfillment, delivery, and technology systems is that now brands have greater ability to earn and retain more customers and more profit. This is yet another step towards a level-playing field so all brands can deliver a lasting consumer experience on every order, every time.”