No matter how much of our lives becomes digital, we still need to buy real things, but not every company wants to pay for warehouses around the country. Chicago-based startup ShipBob Inc. is looking to fix that by offering warehouse and shipping logistics as a service, which it’s looking to expand with $17.5 million in a new funding round announced today.

The Series B round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, and it included investments from FJ Labs, FundersClub and Hyde Park. The new investments bring ShipBob’s total funding to date to $22.5 million.

Founded in 2014, ShipBob offers fulfillment services to companies at rates that are based on volume and product size rather than a monthly fee for space. This makes it easier for companies to scale the amount of warehouse space they need.

In a statement, ShipBob co-founder and Chief Executive Dhruv Saxena said the company’s new funding will allow it to fuel its growth and further develop its software platform. As part of the funding, Ajay Agarwal, managing director of Bain Capital Ventures, will be joining ShipBob’s board of directors.

“ShipBob has built the world’s first ‘full-stack’ logistics solution (aside from Amazon),” Agarwal wrote in a blog post. “The fulfillment centers, the warehouse management software, the order management software, the pick-pack software, the demand planning and inventory optimization software, and the reverse logistics software are all built by ShipBob and seamlessly integrated, enabling a level of speed and customer service, unlike any other fulfillment vendor.”

In his post, Agarwal also said that ShipBob has grown by more than 500 percent in the last year, and some of its clients now include hundreds of merchants who sell their products through digital storefronts such as Magento, Big Commerce, Shopify, Jet, eBay and Amazon.com. According to ShipBob, Agarwal’s industry expertise will help the startup to continue growing.

ShipBob said that it will be opening a new facility in San Francisco, and it hopes to form partnerships with carriers like UPS in order to keep shipping costs down for its customers.

Photo: ShipBob