Airpals

Airpals is a B2B workplace logistics platform that lets brand, marketing, facilities, mailroom and office management teams book same-day courier and messenger services and manage parcel shipping through major carriers from a single system. Same-day courier coverage spans New York City's five boroughs, San Francisco, Miami and 100+ U.S. cities via an offering the company calls "Airpals Concierge," while nationwide and international shipments are handled through FedEx, UPS, USPS and other carriers. Customers can use Airpals' carrier accounts or bring their own.

The product set includes rate and delivery-time comparison across carriers, label creation and printing, scheduled and duplicated orders, multi-stop and bulk order requests, van or truck bookings, round-trip and return orders, shareable real-time tracking pages that withhold sensitive information, multi-user accounts with role-based access, and unified carrier billing that consolidates invoices and prevents staff from opening individual carrier accounts. A recently added AI shipping assistant answers common shipping questions and helps with package details, carrier options, paperwork and label creation.

The company positions itself as a system of record for internal company shipping, covering interoffice movement of documents, supplies, materials, product samples, corporate gifts, electronics and equipment, as well as influencer drops and press mailers.

Founding story

Founder and CEO Maria Jose "Joshe" Ordonez, originally from Cuenca, Ecuador and later based in Brooklyn, spent about a decade in fashion and other operations-heavy fields covering product development, textile engineering, sustainable design, supply chain and photo/video production. Working as a fashion producer she found it easier to move a bag from New York to Nigeria overnight than to move a project item from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and found internal logistics consumed the time meant for creative and strategic work. She first built Airpals as a solution for the projects and companies she worked with, then pivoted from fashion to tech to launch it as a company, funding early operations with her own savings during the pandemic. Ordonez completed Pratt Institute's MPS in Design Management (2018), where she developed commercial projects that formed a foundation for the business.

Business model

B2B software and services: teams sign up for an account (free sign-up plus demo option) and pay for same-day courier deliveries booked through the platform and for multi-carrier labels, either on Airpals' carrier accounts or their own, with carrier invoices consolidated into unified billing. Enterprise accounts support multiple users and departments within one organization.

Revenue is tied to delivery and shipping transactions booked through the platform, including same-day courier orders with upfront pricing and shipping labels purchased across FedEx, UPS and USPS, billed centrally to the organization.

Traction

The company reports more than 17,000 same-day deliveries completed and same-day coverage in 100+ U.S. cities, with customers described as offices and industrial operations nationwide. A published case study describes a 1,500-employee NYC educational organization using Airpals across IT and accounting with fewer than 50 users, 185 shipping orders over 12 months, roughly $10,400 in 2023 shipping spend, about $1,532 in shipping savings and $3,200 in estimated labor cost savings, with shipping tasks reduced from an average of 120 minutes to 3 minutes.

Latest developments

Airpals has added an AI shipping assistant, marketed as new and available free, that answers shipping questions and assists with package details, carrier options, paperwork and label creation. The company also markets scheduled shipments, shareable tracking pages and role-based team access, and is recruiting partner carriers.