Overview
- 2001
August 2001: FGX is founded. - 2002
FGX develops its proprietary online shipping platform.
Dec. 2002: FGX posts $2 million in sales for the year. - 2004
May 2004: James Dowd buys out existing partners and takes on Justin Brown as a partner.
June 2004: FGX moves from its West Village location to the Flatiron District. - 2005
By the end of 2005, FGX posts $6 million in sales. - 2006
FGX delivers its 100,000th shipment. - 2007
FGX completes its expansion of its back-office administrative platform into India.
FGX reorganizes to divide operations and marketing/sales into separate units, preparing the company for a period of significant growth.
FGX begins making its operations more environmentally conscious and begins to spread the word that shipping direct is a greener shipping option.
Dec. 2007: By the end of 2007, FGX posts $9 million in sales. - 2008
FGX relaunches its brand to better explain the benefits of shipping direct.
We started FGX because we knew there was a better way to do international shipping—by shipping direct.
In the late 1990s, James Dowd was on a business trip to Brussels for his former employer, DHL. He was touring the sorting and distribution facility there and experienced firsthand all of the moving parts that it took to complete just one portion of a shipment. As conveyor belts moved packages through the maze that was the facility, his guide proudly boasted that they only lost 86 packages of every 1000 they handle.
“Eighty-six out of a thousand?” he thought. “There’s got to be a better way.”
Dowd returned to New York, researched the shipping giants—FedEx, UPS, and DHL—and looked into on-board couriers out of JFK International Airport.
He realized that the key to breaking the deadlock was that big shippers work off of tonnage. They wait to ship until there is a plane-load of packages ready to send to a particular region, or that choose to route them through other, less convenient locations to get them to their final destinations.
As a small shipper, he realized he could operate more nimbly. He could get packages to their final destinations faster and cheaper than the current alternatives. He realized that the key was shipping direct.
In 2000 he founded FGX, offering clients the opportunity to ship direct. By 2002, the idea was catching on, and the company registered $2 million in sales. This year, the company projects revenues will have quintupled to $10 million by the end of 2008.
In 2008, FGX launched ShipGreener.com, the company’s blog site that is documenting its conversion to a greener shipper. Spearheaded by CEO Justin Brown, FGX is converting its operations into a greener shipping solution and is offering your company the possibility of reducing your carbon footprint by at least 30% by shipping direct. (Learn more about greener shipping.)
Over the next five years, FGX plans to keep growing, replicating its model for clients worldwide. Every day, FGX offers you the chance to save money, cut time off of your deliveries, and reduce your carbon footprint—all through the simple solution of shipping direct.
