In third grade, Sean Henry had enough of the baseball bat dilemma.

It was simple enough as a paradigm—the pros played with wooden bats, while kids only got aluminum. And Henry wanted to play like the pros (or as close as he could get at eight). So, he leveraged the Internet to negotiate with the terms of childhood, finding a manufacturer online who was willing to take the order: 25 wooden bats, kid-sized.

"Growing up, my favorite TV show was ‘How It’s Made,’ and I was just obsessed with manufacturing and building things,” Henry told Fortune. “After watching an episode on baseball bats…I thought ‘I can get that done for myself, and sell the others.’”

Henry has long used e-commerce as a way to claim agency—from selling unwanted Christmas gifts on eBay as a kid to flipping auto parts online as a teenager to fund his car. Now, decades later, he's helping others do the same. As CEO and cofounder of Stord, he’s building the infrastructure—fulfillment, warehousing, and supply chain software—that empowers businesses to run and scale their own online operations. The company has ambitious goals in a chaotic time: to help brands compete with Amazon in a macroeconomic time characterized by moving-target-tariffs. Right now, Stord works with more than 500 mid-market customers, including AG1, Goodr, Proactiv, Native, Quip, and True Classic.

These brands are climbing a steep hill to win in an Amazon-dominated world—in 2024, the giant was the biggest global e-commerce destination, with a gross merchandise value of almost $800 billion, frequently winning on ease of purchase. But Stord has been slowly building a business based in Atlanta that seeks to bridge that gap, recently reaching a new milestone: Stord has raised an $80 million Series E at a $1.5 billion valuation, Fortune has exclusively learned. Strike Capital led the round, with participation from new investors Baillie Gifford, NewView Capital, G Squared, and the Georgia Tech Foundation. A number of existing investors were also in the mix, including Kleiner Perkins, Franklin Templeton, Founders Fund, Bond, and Lux Capital.

“If I zoom back out, I think in 2021 there were a lot of questions about businesses like us,” said Henry, a Georgia Tech dropout who’s since given the Georgia Tech commencement speech and counts the university among his investors. “Are we just using venture dollars to subsidize fast deliveries, and are these models actually scalable, sustainable? Can you make it to the other side? Well, Stord is ten times bigger than the scale we were at in 2021, growing faster and profitable. And that made investors say: ‘Well, we’re not subsidizing anything. This is really unit-economically viable, and clearly customers want this.’”

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The company also raised $120 million in debt, led by SVB and ORIX. A source familiar with the matter said that Stord is in advanced conversations around acquisitions to enhance their scale and network. (The source asked not to be named because they are unauthorized to speak publicly.) Stord declined comment on specific targets or plans.

“[The debt raise] is a function of the scale and profitable place Stord has reached, and a signal of where we really want to go,” said Henry. “Frankly, we had a great balance sheet before this round. We were looking at it as we’re already in a good position…But let’s build the best balance sheet for the company we’re creating long-term, which is generational public business that can compound for decades.”

This round marks a valuation bump from the $1.3 billion the company fetched in its last round in 2022. Since that round, Stord says it has achieved profitability and held onto it, while growing revenue by 450%. Though the startup declined to disclose revenue, the valuation uptick is a win in the world where supply chains are being roiled by tariff-induced ruckus. Like many business owners, Henry is not a fan of tariffs, though he notes that the current spate of tariffs have proved to be an opportunity for Stord.

"So far, [tariffs have] actually been a big tailwind for us,” he said. “A lot of these crises, I hate to say, have multiplied our growth—when COVID broke out, when war broke out, when the UPS or Canadian Post partial strikes occurred, we grew rapidly."

In short, crises have bolstered the need for the kinds of flexible, fast logistics that Stord is building its business on. One example: True Classic, a men’s t-shirt retailer. As tariffs came down, True Classic overnight needed to pivot inventory from Mexico to the U.S.—and logistics firms quoted them timelines from six to eight months. Stord got the job done in 18 days. Chad Brinton, head of operations at True Classic, said via email that he believes the company’s supply chain is “now more resilient to future policy changes.”

This is, to say the least, a disruptive moment across supply chains, heightened for brands that are trying desperately to compete with the ease of no-think shopping on Amazon. There’s a fear anytime you go head-to-head with a behemoth, that you’ll be outmatched—that you’ll be the guy bringing a knife to a gunfight.

But Henry seems undeterred, at the ready with supply chain software, a growing logistics network, and the striking force of 25 kid-sized wooden baseball bats.

See you Monday,

Allie Garfinkle
X:@agarfinks
Email:[email protected]
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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