ARC — a firm that helps discounters, specialty retailers, groceries, supply chain organizations and other companies manage handheld devices deployed to frontline workers — has secured a $60 million investment from Acadia Investment Partners.
The company’s tech aims to mitigate the man-hours and costs involved in maintaining and securing handheld devices. ARC rents kiosks, also known as asset recharge centers, for locking up, charging up, maintaining and monitoring handheld devices used by workers in warehouses, stores, hospitals, airports and other locations.
Screens on the kiosks are interactive, enabling workers to communicate issues with their on-the-job handheld devices, including cell phones, body cameras, ring scanners, tablets, wands, RS scanners, or Zebra devices. After any communication, workers store their devices in lockers on the kiosk where they can be charged or temporarily put out of service, and flagged to a manager to check on it. The technology, which is proprietary, also helps management monitor worker productivity via its cloud-based software and data analysis.
“Enterprises invest billions in devices designed to amplify worker output. But when those devices aren’t working, aren’t charged, or aren’t readily available, the investment is wasted and worker output goes down,” said Douglas Baldasare, chief executive officer of ARC.
Baldasare said his company provides the “infrastructure and intelligence to solve those challenges upstream…With Acadia’s partnership, we can accelerate our vision to become the technology platform that powers the frontline workforce.” Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“In the U.S., almost half of the frontline workforce relies on a device to do their job,” Baldasare said. “The challenge is these devices often go missing, or they sit broken.”
Douglas Baldasare
Baldasare told WWD the $60 million will be used to continue to grow his business, extend the ARC platform to additional frontline-intensive industries, and to innovate. ARC has been rolled out to all 600-plus Sam’s Club locations in the U.S., all 400-plus Walmarts in Canada, Gap Inc.’s distribution centers in North America, Lululemon’s distribution centers in North America and more.
As the 15-year-old, Philadelphia-based tech firm evolved, it changed its name from ChargeItSpot to ARC. The new investment will further the evolution.
As Baldasare said, “There’s a certain number of things we have to build to fully support our clients,” and rectify issues that can arise around the hardware, software updates, Wi-Fi connectivity, or other areas, even from the dust in distribution centers getting into the kiosk lockers and the ports of devices.
“We have been learning about these things in this multidimensional environment,” Baldasare said, noting that the company had to build a plenum to push the dust out. (A plenum works with an HVAC system to reduce dust in the air.)
With the new funding from Acadia, ARC has raised over $100 million to date. Robin Hood Ventures was an earlier investor.
“ARC has the characteristics we look for in a category-defining technology business: a large and persistent problem, a differentiated solution, demonstrated customer value and significant room to scale,” said Harsh Agarwal, founder and managing partner of Acadia Investment Partners, which invests in technology businesses. “As frontline operations become increasingly technology-dependent, effectively managing the devices that power those operations becomes even more mission-critical. We believe ARC is exceptionally well-positioned to continue its substantial growth trajectory by solving these complex operational problems and defining this category.”
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