Saltbox successfully completed its first round of venture funding, raising $3.2 million. The company is poised to debut its co-warehousing model of shared workspace and coworking in Atlanta, this November. Plans include a 27,000-square-foot, flexible co-warehousing space located in a Hills Park industrial facility at 1345 Seaboard Industrial Boulevard NW.
Catering to Atlanta’s “concrete class,” Saltbox seeks to help fill the gap in workspace, which is often a challenge for numerous product-based business entrepreneurs. Combining coworking with co-warehousing, Saltbox provides a space where diverse business owners can collaborate in building a thriving “concrete class” community. The term refers to small-scale importers and exporters, makers, e-commerce operators, distributors, and other logistics and technology professionals.
Saltbox’s solution to the lack of functional and habitable industrial workspace is to offer enterprise-level space and function at coworking scale, providing flexible options that grow with the business. Month-to-month memberships with all-inclusive pricing offer access to a range of office space and private warehouse suites, complete with 24/7 security, commercial freight and mail service, loading docks, shared cargo vehicles, and even on-demand labor.
Tyler Scriven, co-founder and CEO of Saltbox, said, “Because these entrepreneurs don’t need tens of thousands of square feet, they find themselves facing a constant and frustrating tradeoff. Current options are either too expensive, too big or too far away from city centers. And, with the average warehouse space being 34 years old, they’re inevitably forced to give up the modern conveniences that businesses need to thrive. With Saltbox, every entrepreneur has a community to call home.”
Atlanta ranks among the top cities for early-stage startups in the U.S. Among urban centers with populations below 500,000, the city scored highest for growth in tech employment and millennial population. Between 2013 and 2017, there was a 38% increase in the number of local jobs in computer, engineering and science occupations. During the same five years, Atlanta’s millennial population increased by 15.3%; its share of the total population was 28.6% at the end of 2017, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Although non-employer growth and startup density landed toward the lower end of the rankings, the startup survival rate in Atlanta placed first among the country’s best 20 cities for startups and entrepreneurs.
