Parcel Pending, an upstart Irvine-based company that uses electronic lockers and proprietary software to store and access delivered packages, has been acquired by a mail and shipping company based in France.
It’s one of the more sizeable transactions involving an Orange County-based startup firm in years. Parcel Pending began operations in 2013, and was initially funded by area investors including Irvine-based Tech Coast Angels.
Paris-based Neopost, a nearly $800 million-valued company that provides an assortment of mail services, last week said it would buy Parcel Pending for more than $100 million.
Neopost said it wanted to “invest strongly in the nascent and fast-growing parcel locker business, with a focus in the United States,” which accounts for about 40% of the worldwide market, excluding China.
Parcel lockers “are one of the most efficient solutions to solve the issue of the last mile delivery in urban areas,” the company said in a statement.
Neopost already had about 4,400 parcel lockers units, mainly in Japan and France.
Irvine Co. History
Lori Torres, a former senior vice president with Newport Beach-based Irvine Co., started Parcel Pending with an initial focus on uses in large apartment complexes. Irvine Co. is Orange County’s largest owner of rental properties.
Torres saw the explosion of online shopping and the headaches it created for property managers, who were spending a lot of time receiving packages, organizing them, and retrieving them when residents came to pick them up.
Parcel Pending created lockers that residents can access 24/7, freeing leasing managers to work on their primary responsibility of renting apartments.
A courier punches in a six-digit code and selects an apartment number and locker size. The door pops open, the courier puts the package in, and an automated email and text is sent to the recipient notifying him or her of a pending parcel.
“It’s as easy as using an ATM machine,” Torres told the Business Journal during a prior demo of the company’s product.
As of 2014, the company sold its lockers outright for $6,700 to $18,500, depending on size and number, and then charged property owners a monthly software subscription fee between $250 and $550.
Tech Coast Angels invested a reported $1.3 million in the company to help it start operations, and an undisclosed investor in 2016 kicked in an additional $15 million.
Last year, it posted more than $30 million in revenue, according to Neopost.
Parcel Pending employs more than 150 people.
Torres—a recipient of the Business Journal’s Innovator of the Year Awards in 2017—will remain chief executive of Parcel Pending and will lead the Neopost locker initiative in the U.S.
Parcel Pending will continue to be based in Irvine.
“Neopost was the perfect fit for Parcel Pending, as like us, they are committed to providing world class customer service and innovation to our customers,” Torres said last week when the deal was announced.
