Material Handling January 28, 2020
Warehouse Exchange names former eHarmony CEO Grant Langston to top office.
Warehouse space-sharing startup Warehouse Exchange has recruited its new CEO from an industry that is seldom cited as sharing much in common with the logistics sector, naming former dating app eHarmony CEO Grant Langston as its new head.
Westwood, California-based eHarmony is an online dating website that was acquired in 2018 by the German media corporation Prosiebensat.1. Known for the folksy television ads hosted by its gray-haired founder, Neil Clark Warren, the company claims to be the first “algorithm-based” dating site, matching users’ core traits and values according to their answers in lengthy online questionnaires.
While few supply chain CEOs are known to have made the leap from managing a matchmaking business to storing inventory, the two pursuits share more in common than suspected, according to eHarmony.
“In the lead up to eHarmony’s launch, we recognized that meeting someone in a bar or through friends was random and inefficient. We knew we could use demographic and psychographic data to ensure better matches and more successful long-term relationships,” Langston said in a release. “The same is true of buyers and sellers of warehouse space, and I’m confident we can use the same principles to revolutionize the world of logistics, starting with warehousing.”
Calling itself the “WeWork of Warehousing,” Los Angeles-based Warehouse Exchange is a digital marketplace for businesses needing short-term, incremental, commercial warehouse space, the firm says. That need for flexible, on-demand warehousing has been growing fast, thanks to market pressures like customers demanding same-day delivery, robust selection, and narrow margins, Warehouse Exchange says.
In fact, several other firms have entered the sector in recent years to meet that need, featuring Marina del Rey, California-based Flowspace, and venture capital-funded, Seattle-based Flexe.
Warehouse Exchange will now bring new leadership to that pursuit, with the company’s executives saying his previous experience running a “marketplace” style business shares many attributes with their space-sharing model.
“Warehouse space today is the only static component of the supply chain. Trucking, shipping, rail, and manufacturing are all on-demand. Now businesses can get the space they need, when and where they need it,” Warehouse Exchange founder and executive chairman Jonathan Rosenthal said in a release. “Plus, Grant Langston brings an unprecedented depth of knowledge in the marketplace platform industry; we are thrilled that he chose The Warehouse Exchange as his next venture.”
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