Luggage shipping startup LugLess, which Tnooz covered earlier this year, has sold to Luggage Forward, a larger player in the space.
The startup garnered mainstream press after being featured on ABC's The Shark Tank, and was named a "100 Brilliant Company" by Entrepreneur Magazine.
Regarding the acquisition, Zeke Adkins, Co-Founder of Luggage Forward:
We are pleased to be adding LugLess to our arsenal. We have known the LugLess team for several years and are very impressed with what they've built. LugLess has earned a great reputation among a wide range of travelers. The ability to stand out in an increasingly crowded field of luggage delivery companies makes the LugLess brand a valuable asset to Luggage Forward.
Luggage Forward has been named to the Inc 500|5000 for the past four years in a row, and has been locking in much of this growth by acquiring competitors. The purchase of LugLess is its eight since 2009, including The Luggage Club, Baggage Quest, Luggage Express, Luggage Advance, Ship Luggage, Sports Express, and Virtual Bellhop.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and the LugLess team will help transition effort to Luggage Forward before moving on.
Brian Altomare, founder of LugLess said in the annoucement:
LugLess is thrilled to join Luggage Forward and its family of luggage delivery brands. We are excited that even though Shark Tank did not bite, Luggage Forward did.
They really appreciate the value of what our team has built and recognize the growth potential of continuing to expand our service offering to travelers. Luggage Forward has over a decade of experience as a leading luggage shipping provider and LugLess will only benefit from their infrastructure, operations, and client support team.
In an email comment to Tnooz, Altomare clarified how the team will be contributing to Luggage Forward:
They have around 100,000 users and largest company in this space and should be able to handle our new Concur integration and partnership and additional partnerships that we were working on.
We will be 100 percent transitioning over to them the LugLess asset, brand, etc. I am remaining for a bit to help with customer transition as well as biz dev and PR.