July 14, 2025 • 11 mins
Cart.com was founded just over four years ago, and recently closed a $50 million funding round to bring the company's valuation to $1.6 billion. The company has grown rapidly and become one of the leading logistics and supply chain providers in the US. Revenue is nearing $400 million and the company has emerged as a viable pre-IPO candidate.
Omair Tariq, the founder and CEO of Cart.com, discusses the business of logistics and transportation amid a global trade war. Omair speaks with Tim Stenovec and Norah Mulinda on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Happy Friday, everyone, I'm normal Linda here with Tim Stenovic.
I'm in for Carol Master today. Tim let's talk logistics.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I love talking logistics.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Okay, it's oh Mayor's Tariq's he's a specialty for this.
This is his specialty. He's the founder and CEO of
krt dot Com. That's a logistics firm based in Houston, Texas,
and it provides services for B two C and B
to B companies think about online store management, fulfillment, marketing,
and customer support. He's joining us now from Houston. Omiir
(00:44):
can talk to us a little bit about cart dot com.
Seems like you all have done a lot over the
past four years since your inception. What exactly is kart
dot com and what inspired you to launch it?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thanks Er, thanks for having me. First of all, Look,
we started the company to build the world's flow just
infrastructure as a service. The problem we're trying to solve
is we have billions and billions of dollars of GMV
flowing through our operational infrastructure, the power of the technology,
services and operational capabilities for brands of all sizes. About
(01:15):
half a billion dollars in revenue, about ten billion dollars
of GMV, twelve hundred employees globally, and we're just four
years old.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Wow, Okay, that's pretty impressive stuff, Omair. One of the
reasons we like to talk with people like you is
because you have a good idea of what's happening in
the economy right now based on your customers, what you're
seeing on the B to B and B two C level.
Have you seen a significant difference in order fulfillment given
the uncertainty around tariffs post April second?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, I mean, look, there has been a volatility of
things going up and things going down for the last
two years. Consumer sentiment has been shifting almost every quarter.
The last couple of quarters. We've definitely seen a couple
of very interesting trends. The first was, you know, in
Q one, we actually saw a pretty big influx of
consumers flying to get ahead of the tariffs, and the
(02:06):
retailers kind of you know, build up the warehouses to
have the inventory to take care of the consumers that
are shopping. Q two. As the sentiment sort of continues
to be around inflation and pariffs and uncertainty, there's a
little bit of slowdown that we're seeing across the retail landscape.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh Maeric, bring us into the boardroom. What are conversations
like right now? What types of changes are you all
having to implement given the uncertainty?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think in times like this,
we are doubling down because if you think about it right,
scale is something that's going to become so much more
important as you think about economies that these brands are
now looking for. The larger we are, the faster capabilities
that we can provide to the brands we work with,
the better off they're going to be by working with us.
(02:52):
So we're actually you know, we've just announced a couple
of acquisitions in the last nine months, and we're actually
going to announce a couple of more acquisitions in the
next six to nine months. So we're going both organic
and and organically pretty aggressively towards the next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Who would you say, when you know, when you were
when you were building this company, when you founded this company,
what was the problem that existed that wasn't being solved.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Ah, think about a company called Jennie and Jack. They
you know, made beautiful addresses for girls. And if you
think about them selling through their website, selling through their stores,
and their end consumer continuously shopping in other channels outside
of just online and their stores. So think TikTok, think Amazon,
think epay, think Walmart, think notestrom everywhere the consumer is going.
(03:40):
For a mid market retailer to be able to provide
their product catalogs, their inventory, they're pricing across multiple channels,
across a pretty complex permutation of product categories is really hard,
especially when you don't have billions and billions of revenue
and scale to kind of fulfill that, right. So what
car dot Com does is makes that easy. If you're
brand wanting to sell in every channel in the world,
(04:02):
we enable that technologically and operationally. And you know today
we're obviously North America focused, but very soon we're going
to be international where if you want to add Italy
or France as an international market, you can just come
to cart dot com and within twenty four hours you
can start selling there.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Well, Mary, you mentioned acquisitions. What types of companies are
you targeting? What comes to mind when you guys are
thinking about the companies that you'd like to acquire.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think we're looking for very
interesting categories that are growing really fast. You know, logistics companies,
software companies, services companies. Look, the thing about cart dot
Com is that we're we're known as a logistics company,
but we're really the broadest infrastructure company and the deepest
infrastructure company, you know, as a service in the world today.
(04:47):
We do logistics, we do order management, we do services.
So when we think about acquisition targets, we're looking at categories,
not just product categories, but you know, companies that are
doing software, companies that are doing services, and companies that
are going to help augment our operational infrastructure and scale.
So we're very very broad. We're essentially trying to replicate
(05:09):
the infrastructure that Amazon has built, except in a non
marketplace format where we're partners with them, not competitors.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So, speaking of scaling, where are you all currently positioned
and what are you thinking about in terms of regions
that you'd potentially scale in.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah, look, I mean today we're we're you know, we're
shipping about three hundred and fifty million units a year.
That's our last year numbers in the US alone. You know,
we're looking at the UK, we're looking at Europe, or
looking at the Middle East and Asia and Latin so
in that order, right, So the idea is to sort
of start moving eastwards into one geography at a time
(05:46):
over the next couple of years.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
What are some of the challenges that come with expanding
into international markets, especially given the volatility right now in
the uncertainty regarding tariffs. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Look, we're in the business of making it easy for
the mid market brands that we work with, which means
that we have to do the hard work. So when
you enter a new market, you're not only thinking about
localized supply chain, the mid market challenges that occur, the
regulatory challenges that are now being thrown because of tariffs.
You also have to think about Okay, it's not just
about procuring, it's also about selling. It's about increasing demand
(06:21):
for these brands. So we sort of solve a three
part problem. One we help consumers drive to these brands. Two,
we make sure that they have the technology to basically
sell in the languages and geographies that we're enabling the infrastructure.
And then three we have to help with the procurement,
which is the last amount delivery of those packages, right,
So we are actually taking over the complexity of the
(06:44):
problems so that the brands don't have to. Essentially we
do all the hard work around the complex infrastructure from
technology to logistics. Brands can just connect and integrate into
our infrastructure and sell in these geographies.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
How are you thinking about artificial intelligence right now and
implement it into the work process?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I mean, look, AI has been in our DNA from
day one. One of the first three hires we made
was a chief data scientist at part dot com. We
have been leveraging AI very significantly over the last four
years in things like figuring out how to connect demand
with inventry management. How do you predict demand? So, if
you think about it right, the logistics problem actually starts
(07:24):
with the consumer picking yes that they want to buy something.
And if you can have very large data sets that
connect the demand problem with the supply problem, then you're
essentially optimizing the entire value chain. So we have forecasting
models that are using and leveraging AI today we predict
demand before it occurs, and we're continuing to invest very
heavily in that technology so that we can give the
(07:44):
brands you work with in upper and a much upper hand.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
You know, there seems to still be this disconnection between
what companies know about me and Look, I think consumers
value privacy, no question, but I also think that it's
like kind of weird when you're browsing the web and
you get an AD for something that you just bought,
because the browser doesn't understand that you have just bought
(08:11):
this this good. Is there a way that your your
software can and your solution can actually help companies understand
consumers online and offline behavior better?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah? Absolutely. I mean, look, we're big believers of privacy
and security and you know, consumer preferences, so this is
a this is like a very important topic that we
talk about almost on a daily basis. We use very
large anonymized data sets to you know, do empower the
analytics that we ultimately end up providing for the brands
we work with. So you know, once the consumer feels
(08:45):
comfortable that you know, the way their data is being
used is only to help them not to invade their privacy,
they then become more willing to actually have you allow
you access to it the way we're connecting for these brands,
the data from the time that the consumer or starts
thinking about a product to the time the product actually
shows up to their doorstep. We're the only company in
(09:06):
the world that has that breadth of information, right because
we sort of connect the demand side with marketing services
and marketplace services, and we obviously have the operational infrastructure
tens of billions of score feet of space.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
How do you think about sustainability as it relates to
AI implementations.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
I mean, look, the first thing is that you have
to prevent AI from running enough, right, You have to
keep control and tabs of how artificial intelligence is being used.
I think too many companies are either using AI as
a buzzword and not really using it, or they're using
it in a way that's maybe abrasive and not actually
what consumers really want. So you have to find the
(09:43):
sweet spot of using artificial intelligence in a way that
you're optimizing for the profitability of these brands, for the
growth of these brands. And obviously there are lots of
internal use cases that we're using II for, but ultimately
what we're really trying to do is help these brands
grow faster and make more money.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh maor how do you how do you make it
so that your order book grows? I mean you mentioned
a couple of your clients, Janey and Jack. Authentic Brands
is also another Tom's pacsun certainly brands that our audience
is familiar with. How do you grow that number?
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah? I mean, look, we are known as a company
that does a lot of work in the B two
C space for mid market retailers. But the interesting story
about car dot com is that about half of the business,
half of our revenues actually with B two B companies.
So you know, first of all, you've got virtually almost
a trillion dollar addressable market in the mid market retail segment,
(10:39):
and then you've got another trillion and a half dollar
addressable market on the B two B site. So we
actually do a lot of work with B two B companies.
Charismatics Brands is one example where they are the providers
of scrubs for doctors and they work with a large
number of shops across the United States where small mom
and pop shops are the provide their scrupts to and
(11:01):
we're powering their order management and logistics platform. We actually
do a lot of work with the federal and state government,
so we are we're actually doing a lot of work
in health and pharma. So when you think about the
infrastructure that we've built for the B two C segment,
that's only about one third of our overall customer segment.
But you know the other one, you know, two thirds
is actually B to B and the government. So growth
(11:24):
is virtually unlimited when we think about the address of
the market and what we're going after. That's why we have,
you know, gotten so big so quickly.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Oh, Mark Tuick, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate appreciated.
Founder and CEO of cart dot Com, the logistics firm,
joining us from Houston
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Happy Friday, everyone, I'm normal Linda here with Tim Stenovic.
I'm in for Carol Master today. Tim let's talk logistics.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I love talking logistics.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Okay, it's oh Mayor's Tariq's he's a specialty for this.
This is his specialty. He's the founder and CEO of
krt dot Com. That's a logistics firm based in Houston, Texas,
and it provides services for B two C and B
to B companies think about online store management, fulfillment, marketing,
and customer support. He's joining us now from Houston. Omiir
(00:44):
can talk to us a little bit about cart dot com.
Seems like you all have done a lot over the
past four years since your inception. What exactly is kart
dot com and what inspired you to launch it?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thanks Er, thanks for having me. First of all, Look,
we started the company to build the world's flow just
infrastructure as a service. The problem we're trying to solve
is we have billions and billions of dollars of GMV
flowing through our operational infrastructure, the power of the technology,
services and operational capabilities for brands of all sizes. About
(01:15):
half a billion dollars in revenue, about ten billion dollars
of GMV, twelve hundred employees globally, and we're just four
years old.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Wow, Okay, that's pretty impressive stuff, Omair. One of the
reasons we like to talk with people like you is
because you have a good idea of what's happening in
the economy right now based on your customers, what you're
seeing on the B to B and B two C level.
Have you seen a significant difference in order fulfillment given
the uncertainty around tariffs post April second?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, I mean, look, there has been a volatility of
things going up and things going down for the last
two years. Consumer sentiment has been shifting almost every quarter.
The last couple of quarters. We've definitely seen a couple
of very interesting trends. The first was, you know, in
Q one, we actually saw a pretty big influx of
consumers flying to get ahead of the tariffs, and the
(02:06):
retailers kind of you know, build up the warehouses to
have the inventory to take care of the consumers that
are shopping. Q two. As the sentiment sort of continues
to be around inflation and pariffs and uncertainty, there's a
little bit of slowdown that we're seeing across the retail landscape.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh Maeric, bring us into the boardroom. What are conversations
like right now? What types of changes are you all
having to implement given the uncertainty?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think in times like this,
we are doubling down because if you think about it right,
scale is something that's going to become so much more
important as you think about economies that these brands are
now looking for. The larger we are, the faster capabilities
that we can provide to the brands we work with,
the better off they're going to be by working with us.
(02:52):
So we're actually you know, we've just announced a couple
of acquisitions in the last nine months, and we're actually
going to announce a couple of more acquisitions in the
next six to nine months. So we're going both organic
and and organically pretty aggressively towards the next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Who would you say, when you know, when you were
when you were building this company, when you founded this company,
what was the problem that existed that wasn't being solved.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Ah, think about a company called Jennie and Jack. They
you know, made beautiful addresses for girls. And if you
think about them selling through their website, selling through their stores,
and their end consumer continuously shopping in other channels outside
of just online and their stores. So think TikTok, think Amazon,
think epay, think Walmart, think notestrom everywhere the consumer is going.
(03:40):
For a mid market retailer to be able to provide
their product catalogs, their inventory, they're pricing across multiple channels,
across a pretty complex permutation of product categories is really hard,
especially when you don't have billions and billions of revenue
and scale to kind of fulfill that, right. So what
car dot Com does is makes that easy. If you're
brand wanting to sell in every channel in the world,
(04:02):
we enable that technologically and operationally. And you know today
we're obviously North America focused, but very soon we're going
to be international where if you want to add Italy
or France as an international market, you can just come
to cart dot com and within twenty four hours you
can start selling there.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Well, Mary, you mentioned acquisitions. What types of companies are
you targeting? What comes to mind when you guys are
thinking about the companies that you'd like to acquire.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think we're looking for very
interesting categories that are growing really fast. You know, logistics companies,
software companies, services companies. Look, the thing about cart dot
Com is that we're we're known as a logistics company,
but we're really the broadest infrastructure company and the deepest
infrastructure company, you know, as a service in the world today.
(04:47):
We do logistics, we do order management, we do services.
So when we think about acquisition targets, we're looking at categories,
not just product categories, but you know, companies that are
doing software, companies that are doing services, and companies that
are going to help augment our operational infrastructure and scale.
So we're very very broad. We're essentially trying to replicate
(05:09):
the infrastructure that Amazon has built, except in a non
marketplace format where we're partners with them, not competitors.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So, speaking of scaling, where are you all currently positioned
and what are you thinking about in terms of regions
that you'd potentially scale in.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah, look, I mean today we're we're you know, we're
shipping about three hundred and fifty million units a year.
That's our last year numbers in the US alone. You know,
we're looking at the UK, we're looking at Europe, or
looking at the Middle East and Asia and Latin so
in that order, right, So the idea is to sort
of start moving eastwards into one geography at a time
(05:46):
over the next couple of years.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
What are some of the challenges that come with expanding
into international markets, especially given the volatility right now in
the uncertainty regarding tariffs. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Look, we're in the business of making it easy for
the mid market brands that we work with, which means
that we have to do the hard work. So when
you enter a new market, you're not only thinking about
localized supply chain, the mid market challenges that occur, the
regulatory challenges that are now being thrown because of tariffs.
You also have to think about Okay, it's not just
about procuring, it's also about selling. It's about increasing demand
(06:21):
for these brands. So we sort of solve a three
part problem. One we help consumers drive to these brands. Two,
we make sure that they have the technology to basically
sell in the languages and geographies that we're enabling the infrastructure.
And then three we have to help with the procurement,
which is the last amount delivery of those packages, right,
So we are actually taking over the complexity of the
(06:44):
problems so that the brands don't have to. Essentially we
do all the hard work around the complex infrastructure from
technology to logistics. Brands can just connect and integrate into
our infrastructure and sell in these geographies.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
How are you thinking about artificial intelligence right now and
implement it into the work process?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I mean, look, AI has been in our DNA from
day one. One of the first three hires we made
was a chief data scientist at part dot com. We
have been leveraging AI very significantly over the last four
years in things like figuring out how to connect demand
with inventry management. How do you predict demand? So, if
you think about it right, the logistics problem actually starts
(07:24):
with the consumer picking yes that they want to buy something.
And if you can have very large data sets that
connect the demand problem with the supply problem, then you're
essentially optimizing the entire value chain. So we have forecasting
models that are using and leveraging AI today we predict
demand before it occurs, and we're continuing to invest very
heavily in that technology so that we can give the
(07:44):
brands you work with in upper and a much upper hand.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
You know, there seems to still be this disconnection between
what companies know about me and Look, I think consumers
value privacy, no question, but I also think that it's
like kind of weird when you're browsing the web and
you get an AD for something that you just bought,
because the browser doesn't understand that you have just bought
(08:11):
this this good. Is there a way that your your
software can and your solution can actually help companies understand
consumers online and offline behavior better?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah? Absolutely. I mean, look, we're big believers of privacy
and security and you know, consumer preferences, so this is
a this is like a very important topic that we
talk about almost on a daily basis. We use very
large anonymized data sets to you know, do empower the
analytics that we ultimately end up providing for the brands
we work with. So you know, once the consumer feels
(08:45):
comfortable that you know, the way their data is being
used is only to help them not to invade their privacy,
they then become more willing to actually have you allow
you access to it the way we're connecting for these brands,
the data from the time that the consumer or starts
thinking about a product to the time the product actually
shows up to their doorstep. We're the only company in
(09:06):
the world that has that breadth of information, right because
we sort of connect the demand side with marketing services
and marketplace services, and we obviously have the operational infrastructure
tens of billions of score feet of space.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
How do you think about sustainability as it relates to
AI implementations.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
I mean, look, the first thing is that you have
to prevent AI from running enough, right, You have to
keep control and tabs of how artificial intelligence is being used.
I think too many companies are either using AI as
a buzzword and not really using it, or they're using
it in a way that's maybe abrasive and not actually
what consumers really want. So you have to find the
(09:43):
sweet spot of using artificial intelligence in a way that
you're optimizing for the profitability of these brands, for the
growth of these brands. And obviously there are lots of
internal use cases that we're using II for, but ultimately
what we're really trying to do is help these brands
grow faster and make more money.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh maor how do you how do you make it
so that your order book grows? I mean you mentioned
a couple of your clients, Janey and Jack. Authentic Brands
is also another Tom's pacsun certainly brands that our audience
is familiar with. How do you grow that number?
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah? I mean, look, we are known as a company
that does a lot of work in the B two
C space for mid market retailers. But the interesting story
about car dot com is that about half of the business,
half of our revenues actually with B two B companies.
So you know, first of all, you've got virtually almost
a trillion dollar addressable market in the mid market retail segment,
(10:39):
and then you've got another trillion and a half dollar
addressable market on the B two B site. So we
actually do a lot of work with B two B companies.
Charismatics Brands is one example where they are the providers
of scrubs for doctors and they work with a large
number of shops across the United States where small mom
and pop shops are the provide their scrupts to and
(11:01):
we're powering their order management and logistics platform. We actually
do a lot of work with the federal and state government,
so we are we're actually doing a lot of work
in health and pharma. So when you think about the
infrastructure that we've built for the B two C segment,
that's only about one third of our overall customer segment.
But you know the other one, you know, two thirds
is actually B to B and the government. So growth
(11:24):
is virtually unlimited when we think about the address of
the market and what we're going after. That's why we have,
you know, gotten so big so quickly.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Oh, Mark Tuick, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate appreciated.
Founder and CEO of cart dot Com, the logistics firm,
joining us from Houston
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.