Contemporary logistics platform announces record growth and predictions for 2019
New York, NY - While the Amazon revolution has automated express shipping for most items, sending specialty goods like fine art, furniture, oversized or fragile objects has not yet been streamlined. With the recent report that U.S. online sales of non-conveyable goods has hit $30 billion, equal to about 10 percent of total e-commerce sales, it is clear the industry needs a new approach to logistics, and ARTA, the contemporary logistics platform for shipping specialized items, is delivering. Today, the company is announcing impressive momentum, including that it has managed shipments to/from nearly 750 cities in 50 countries, and has fulfilled nearly 30,000 items to-date. ARTA has grown its customer base by 90 percent in just the last year.
“The market for buying and selling luxury items has exploded, and ARTA has been at the forefront of helping art dealers, auction houses, designers, businesses and consumers manage the end-to-end process, including providing stellar customer service from collection through the last mile,” said Adam Fields, Founder and CEO of ARTA. “This industry needs an automated solution that allows for the fulfillment of specialized goods as easily as FedEx does for small parcel items, and ARTA is poised to deliver it. Our impressive growth is validation of what we’re already providing and we intend to continue innovating to ensure we meet our customers’ evolving needs.”
In 2018, ARTA upgraded its solution, adding 10 new features including ARTA Instant Quote, which enables buyers and sellers (businesses or consumers) to immediately receive bookable quotes through the ARTA Shipping Calculator. The platform already allows users to easily shop for additional quotes from ARTA’s vast network of more than 350 service partners.
Looking ahead to 2019, ARTA predicts a few trends for shipping specialty items
Increased demand for buying specialized goods online
Buyers are becoming more and more comfortable with purchasing high-value, fragile, or oversized goods online -- goods that cannot be shipped and handled by conventional parcel networks. And given the global nature of ecommerce, online sales of items from furniture, art and design objects to medical and workout equipment will present a tremendous opportunity for businesses and individuals invested in this category.
Focus on digital fitness
Businesses that understand how to leverage new technologies, from data analytics to automation and platform solutions, will come out ahead in 2019. Along with an increased demand for buying specialized goods online, consumers will expect that fulfillment of these items should be as seamless as purchasing something on Amazon. Thus, companies will have to invest in supply chain solutions that can support these trends in order to compete and gain market share.
Perfecting payments
Just like with the traditional e-commerce market, the payment process will become more automated for specialty items as shippers and logistics providers cater to providing a more ubiquitous experience. Compliant solutions that support various payment methods for high value transactions and multiple currencies will be essential to support the market demand.
With a focus on innovation and keeping up with growing demand for its solutions, ARTA nearly doubled size of its team in 2018 and is looking to increase its workforce by more than 50 percent in 2019.
