Most people wouldn’t consider a nearly 20,000-square-foot e-commerce hub a godsend, but for Sonya Gilkey, coming across ECOMSPACES in the historic Bronner Bros. building in the Westside, was exactly that.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is my answered prayer,’” Gilkey, who goes by Sistah Nandi and is the inventor behind a styling tool for dreadlocks called Wrap-A-Loc, said.
Sistah Nandi began selling Wrap-A-Loc at hair shows in 2007, but 10 years later, she was tired of running her business from her home. She began looking for an office space and that is when she stepped foot in ECOMSPACES.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The co-founder of ECOMSPACES, Maïré Bavarday-Rosa, toured Sistah Nandi around all the small offices for rent, which fit what she initially was looking for. Bavarday-Rosa told her, however, that they didn’t just have offices, but operated an entire fulfillment center in the back of the warehouse and could handle sending out her products. Sistah Nandi was immediately sold.
“It was a godsend. I was like ‘Girl, I ain’t leaving here. I ain’t going nowhere,’” she said.
Many small businesses reach a point that Wrap-A-Loc did, where the company has outgrown its current space in a garage or spare bedroom but isn’t necessarily at a size to work with (or afford) large third-party logistics (3PL) providers to help them with receiving, storing and shipping products. That’s where smaller 3PL’s like ECOMSPACES come in.
And during the busy holiday shopping season, small businesses often need more support. In 2023, during the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, U.S. consumers spent $38 billion, up nearly 8% from the previous year, according to Adobe. Those dollars represented products that had to be picked from a warehouse, packaged and shipped.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Sistah Nandi was the first client of ECOMSPACES, but the hub has since grown to support more than 70 e-commerce businesses with everything from product photo shoots to marketing. Memberships start at $99 per month and members also get access to the fulfillment services, which cost around $2 per order to ship and an additional $0.50 per extra item picked for that order.
ECOMSPACES ships for brands like Slutty Vegan, Magic City and SHE by Shereé, a clothing line run by “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Shereé Whitfield.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
‘It’s been a lifesaver’
Just six miles north of ECOMSPACES, near West Midtown, sits Saltbox, which consists of two massive warehouses – 49,000 and 114,000 square feet, respectively – also focused on helping small businesses store, pack and ship products.
Tyler Scriven co-founded Saltbox in 2019 in Atlanta after buying an e-commerce business three years prior and realizing just how difficult it was to manage logistics.
“We ran our warehouse in the back of one of our retail stores and had to, you know, beg the mailman to take away our packages and beg the delivery guys to not block our neighbor’s door with pallets,” Scriven said. “It was just a real mess.”
Credit: Bita Honarvar
Credit: Bita Honarvar
From that chaos Saltbox was born to serve as a co-working, shared warehousing and fulfillment space for other small business owners like him.
For Margaret Spencer, general manager of Unexpected Tours, finding Saltbox was “a lifesaver.”
Unexpected Tours began as a walking tour company in 2015, giving tourists a look at the untold stories of Atlanta through the lens of the Civil Rights movement. But then the pandemic hit and they had to pivot. They landed on hosting virtual experiences focused on diversity, equity and inclusion for companies.
Each event they host comes with the option of getting a themed box sent to employees. For their holiday party experience, the box came with craft supplies to decorate a paper sweater as a virtual ugly sweater party, a cookie that could be painted with food coloring, champagne popcorn and other treats.
Credit: Bita Honarvar
Credit: Bita Honarvar
Spencer and her co-workers used to ship out of the owner’s house, but when there were more than 500 boxes stacked in the carport, they knew they needed to find a separate space.
“Saltbox seemed to have everything we needed because they have pickups right here,” Spencer said. The hub also has someone on staff to receive packages for Unexpected Tours, so they aren’t sitting outside, vulnerable to theft.
Saltbox now has 12 locations across the U.S. and helps 900 merchants nationally. The company has raised about $55 million in venture capital over the past four years, according to Scriven.
Saltbox did not disclose specific pricing for fulfillment services, but said costs are customized for each client and typically comes out to 10% of a business’ top line revenue.
On November 29, just five days after Black Friday, Saltbox’s Atlanta location shipped 827 orders and still had more than 300 orders still to be sent out. Across all their locations that day, they shipped 2,200 orders and still had 2,400 remaining.
Credit: Bita Honarvar
Credit: Bita Honarvar
Saltbox and ECOMSPACES are not the only local Black-owned logistics hub supporting small businesses in the city.
ECOMSPACES is planning on working with the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, which has a small fulfillment center supported by UPS, to help early stage businesses scale their logistics operations. ECOMSPACES is also partnering with City Express Fulfillment, which has locations in Marietta and Savannah, to help founders when they’ve outgrown their warehouse.
It’s all toward a goal of helping small business owners reach their potential.
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