Irvine-based Parcel Pending hired Irvine Co. alum Colleen Lambros as its chief marketing officer, adding another connection between Orange County’s dominant real estate company and one of the area’s fast-growing businesses.
The newly created position at Parcel Pending comes about three months after the company—which employs about 160 people—completed its nearly $100 million sale to French mail services company Neopost.
Lambros will focus on marketing and branding initiatives. Parcel Pending said it is looking to expand its package delivery locker systems from apartment complexes to other sectors.
Parcel Pending uses electronic lockers and proprietary software to store and access delivered packages. It said more than 20 million packages have been delivered using its lockers.
The company has installed over 2,700 systems as of February; primarily in apartment complexes. Growth potential exists in grocery and retail stores, universities, single-family homebuilders and other commercial spaces.
The company is working on a proof-of-concept with “significant brands in the retail space” to let customers buy goods online and pick them up at a Parcel Pending locker system in-store, Lambros told the Business Journal.
Apartment History
“Colleen joins our team at an exciting yet pivotal time as we look to rapidly expand our locker solutions across the nation in collaboration with Neopost,” said Lori Torres, chief executive of Parcel Pending, in a statement.
Torres was a senior vice president at Irvine Co., and worked at the Newport Beach-based firm for 13 years, most of those as a senior vice president of property management in charge of more than 40,000 apartment units. She left the company to start Parcel Pending in 2013.
Lambros spent 15 years at Irvine Co., serving as group senior vice president of corporate marketing and vice president of marketing, sales and training.
The two worked closely together in the company’s apartments division early in their careers, Lambros said.
“I had watched pretty closely what she was able to create with this company over the last five years and was just wildly impressed with the level of traction, and the level of talent she was attracting,” said Lambros of Torres. “She is an incredible leader, the product is such an incredible solution for such a needed problem.”
Lambros left Irvine Co. about three years ago to take the chief marketing officer position at Irvine-based Auction.com, the nation’s largest online real estate marketplace. She oversaw a rebranding initiative—the company’s now known as Ten-X—prior to the 2017 sale of a controlling stake in the parent company to Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, a deal that valued the firm at around $1.5 billion.
Growth Delivery
After Parcel Pending’s sale in January, Torres told the Business Journal she would stay on as chief executive for at least two years and that the company would continue to be based in Irvine. She also said the company had no plans to slow down.
Just a month after the sale was finalized, Parcel Pending announced that it was installing its first locker systems for individual homes in Las Vegas, in partnership with homebuilder Toll Brothers, with plans to roll out nationally.
Lambros said given the company’s growth plans, she foresees additional new hires.
Last year, the company had a revenue “north of $30 million,” according to Torres. As of February, Parcel Pending was taking more than 1.2 million packages per month.
