Freightquote provides a good example of how retail is changing.
The company is the nation’s largest online shipping broker. And it’s continually growing, which is why it needed a new 200,000-square-foot headquarters, a building that opened July 16 in the southern part of Kansas City, near Interestate-435 and State Line Road.
Like better known online businesses — Zappos.com and Amazon, to name two of the biggest — the online world has been good to Freightquote. The company boasts annual revenues of more than $500 million and moves more than 1 million shipments across North America every year.
To handle its growth, Freightquote moved from its previous headquarters in Lenexa, Kansas, to its new location in Kansas City. Kansas City’s RED Brokerage worked with the company to help it find a new site. RED also found a developer — Van Trust Real Estate — that could meet Freightquote’s tight construction schedule. Construction of the $44 million headquarters took just 10 months, and 1,100 company employees are now working in the new building.
“We’re excited to be in the state of Missouri. We’re excited to be in Kansas City, Missouri. We’ve got a lot of growth ambitions ahead. We’ve got the space for it. We’re hopeful this place will hold us for a good while,” said Freightquote chief executive officer Tim Barton during the July 16 move-in.
Freightquote is no stranger to moves. As RED Brokerage reports, this latest headquarters is the company’s ninth building since the company got its start in 1998.
In addition to RED Brokerage and Van Trust Real Estate, several other companies helped bring the new headquarters online in record time: Opus Design Build, Stinson Morrison Hecker and Lutjen Engineering.
