Volo Commerce Origin, the multichannel management system launched as eSellerPro in 2006 and renamed to Volo Commerce in 2015, has been acquired by the FOG Software Group for an undisclosed amount. Volo Commerce will continue to run as an independent business unit with the support of FOG financially and operationally.
Volo Origin (the multichannel solution) has been acquired by FOG Software, leaving Volo AI with the former owners to operate as a separate business.
Volo Commerce have had many problems over the years, once a stalwart rival to ChannelAdvisor and loved by it’s users, complaints of bugs that weren’t fixed and enhancements that never materialised plagued Volo’s conference events on an annual basis. Then, a couple of years ago Volo disappeared from the public multichannel world and retreated to their plush office in Cheltenham and for a while no one other than their customers heard from them.
Over the years, the customer base appears to have shrunk to just a couple of hundred customers as users migrated to other solutions. We also believe that staff levels have shrunk having seen key members accepting positions with other organisations meaning the offices in Cheltenham are way larger than was needed when staff numbered more than a hundred.
An indication of how much the company has shrunk is the latest figures which reveal that Volo processes annually “more than 14 million orders”. Back in 2014 when eSellerPro was rebranded to Volo, the number was 40 million.
Volo Commerce has received massive funding over the past decade, £2 million from Notion Captial in 2010, who then pumped in another £1 million in 2012. Three years later in 2015 Juno dropped £4 million into Volo’s coffers and then in 2017 NVM rescued the company with £6.2 million bringing the total investment over the past decade to £15.8 million. The acquisition price paid by FOG Software Group hasn’t been revealed, but one might suspect that investors haven’t yet seen a return on their investment.
Sandy Scott, Portfolio Manager, Retail, Textile, and Apparel Tech at FOG is now the new CEO at Volo Commerce which returns to the volocommerce.com website and retains the massive Cheltenham office.
With the acquisition of Volo Origin, Chris Farrelly founder and CTO of eSeller Pro which, became Volo Commerce, is rejoining the leadership team as Chief Technology Officer and will provide the vision for the future of the platform as well as lead engineering.
“Having originally founded the business, I can’t wait to rollout our new product development strategy and act on customer feedback to ensure our business priorities are centred around their core requirements. I am extremely passionate about the platform and am thrilled to be part of its continued success.”
– Chris Farrelly founder and CTO, Volo Commerce
Former Volo Commerce CEO Ben White is now CEO of Volo AI which can be found at volo.ai and have taken the former Volo London office.
2 Responses
Best thing I ever did was leave Volo for another solution. My only regret is it took me 10 years to do it. I should have done it so much sooner.