Global-E Acquires Borderfree In Further Consolidation of Cross-Border Market

Global-E Acquires Borderfree In Further Consolidation of Cross-Border Market

Borderfree has had a long history - both ups and downs here. I worked there for about 3 years as part of Pitney Bowes post-acquisition.

The history of the Borderfree brand itself started as part of Canada Post originally and there was a very complex and sorted history between Pitney Bowes and Canada Post and Borderfree with multiple twists and turns that perhaps only David Coulson and Kris Green and Craig Reed can explain ;-). I seriously have an email in my inbox from Craig in about 2001 from Craig@Borderfree. Truly one of the OGs of the whole market.

Anywho....

The company got its start as a foreign exchange hedging platform E4X in Israel, the company later became 51 (dot) com (Canada being the 51st state, after all) and then rebranded to become Borderfree, acquiring the name from Canada Post.

Suffice to say, Borderfree invented Global-E's model and killed many other cross-border companies on the way to its IPO -- which was one of the most perfectly timed IPOs -- at a time of extremely low value of the dollar and low tariffs.

What does Global-E get for this?

Primarily Macy's and Nordstroms and maybe Crate & Barrel. I'm sure they would have liked to get Neiman's, but Farfetch picked them off earlier.

There are many Borderfree names which are not Enterprise level which will probably be moved to a more Flow-like solution, as they are not high volume enough to support on the more expensive Borderfree model.

Who is the biggest loser in this?

I would think ESW. Anything that makes Global-E stronger puts pressure on ESW (who recently acquired ScaleFast to expand their portfolio -- odds are this acquisition will not be the best culture-mesh).

Get your popcorn out in the cross border ecommerce market.