Good Company quietly surges in north Springfield

With no local clients, Good Company mostly flies under the radar in the Springfield business community.

The third-party fulfillment company – or 3PL, to use industry jargon – is based in a 50,000-square-foot warehouse at 4230 W. Kearney St. in northwest Springfield, where 250 employees work around the clock to ship merchandise for 25-30 client companies.

This is according to Chad Carleton, who founded the company in July 2020 organized under We’re Good Company LLC and serves as CEO and sole shareholder.

The Good Company has exceeded 100% growth each year since its founding in July 2020.

Carleton said his company racked up $1 million in business in 2021, then $3.5 million in 2022, $7 million in 2023, $15 million in 2024 and $31 million in 2025.

The company looks to send about 3 million shipments this year and to exceed $35 million in business this year – “Who knows how high it could go?” Carleton said.

Carleton said Good Company grew out of work he was doing as chief operating officer at another Springfield company, Everything Kitchens LLC, from 2015-23.

“One of our largest vendors asked us to consider doing fulfillment for them,” he said.

That undisclosed client was a dinnerware company with a familiar and historic name, Carleton said. That company was a tricky one, but Carleton said he was up for the challenges it posed, and the referrals quickly followed.

“Word spread that we were willing to take on some of the more nuanced fulfillment,” he said, adding that at that time, he didn’t have a company name or website.

“Formalizing ourselves came after the fact,” he said.

Fast forward to today, he said, and what he refers to as Good Company’s low-profile facility is packed to the gills.

It all started with a plucky willingness by Carleton and his team to take on challenging jobs from high-volume, direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands, both U.S. based and international.

“We had to be a lot less picky, but the referral business was good,” he said.

Joining the dinnerware client was a company that makes apparel out of alpaca wool and another that offers at-home carbonation systems, plus a major European manufacturer of ecofriendly cleaning products.

From its origin in fulfillment of kitchen products, Good Company now handles all kinds of consumer goods, from apparel to laundry detergent to supplements, Carleton said.

“Our forte is high-volume ecommerce companies doing between 10,000 and 40,000 orders a month,” he said, adding, “We’re category agnostic.”

How it works
Carleton said it’s no small task to stay in front of all the nuance that needs to be managed on behalf of clients, but he gets pleasure from helping successful businesses maximize their potential.

“We’ve leaned into brands that need a higher level of service,” he said.

One thing that makes Good Company unique, he said, is its atypical fulfillment model. In a typical fulfillment center, a warehouse worker might push a cart holding 25 orders, possibly from 25 different companies.

“We pick and ship every client completely independently,” he said.

That means each client company has a dedicated team of employees focusing on just that brand.

“It’s the same people doing the same jobs every day,” he said. “That allows us to accumulate wisdom, and the employees build a real affinity for the brand they work with.”

The goal, Carleton said, is client satisfaction.

“Our north star is a happy recipient,” he said.

Carleton has a background in ecommerce, and he said most ecommerce businesses have no desire to open a warehouse and ship products themselves – hence the reliance on 3PLs.

Miranda Stamps, Good Company’s chief operating officer, said Good Company’s growth has been organic.

“Everything we do is referral only,” she said. “We haven’t ourselves out there at all.”

She acknowledged that there is little local awareness of Good Company in the community, and what there is comes through its employees.

“We’re hoping to increase our footprint,” she said.

Positioned for growth
A visit to the Good Company warehouse shows space is just about maxed out, and Carleton said he is exploring the possibility of expanding into a bigger facility in Springfield – “Nothing concrete enough that I’d feel confident giving you the address,” he said.

And he also plans to expand to warehouses on the East or West Coast – or both.

For Carleton, Springfield’s location is part of the secret sauce to running a successful 3PL.

“Truly, Springfield is arguably the best single location to ship small-parcel packages out of,” he said.

Carleton explained that the U.S. Postal Service identifies eight shipping zones.

Springfield has less than 1% of the nation in a Zone 8 – defined by the USPS as destinations 1,801 miles or greater from the originating ZIP code. By comparison, if shipping from Los Angeles, roughly half of the nation would be a Zone 8 destination.

“The heavier something is and the farther it has to go, the more expensive it is,” he said. “Being 90 miles from the dead center of the U.S. is a great place to be.”

Good Company doesn’t rely merely on the USPS; it also fulfills through FedEx, UPS, DHL, Amazon, and international and regional services, Carleton said.

“If we’re being really reductive, the business is refreshingly straightforward: We receive product on a truck, we put it on a shelf, we take it off the shelf and put it in a box and then put it back on a truck,” he said. “If you do that – we’ll do about 3 million shipments this year – you can support a lot of jobs.”

Carleton said it has been satisfying to watch the people in those jobs excel – many of them still on board, having been with Good Company since its start.

“Some of those guys went from making $10.50 an hour to making six figures,” he said.

Carleton gives credit for his company’s success to those workers.

“We’ve got a really great team,” he said.

Stamps agreed.

“I would say a lot of it is luck, but a lot of it is just credit to our team – a team that truly cares,” she said. “They care about each brand as if it were their own, and that resonates with clients.”

Stamps said Good Company turns down about 95% of potential clients who reach out to them.

“We’re really about relationships,” she said. “We say that we are a people company, and that goes not only for our employees, but for the clients we serve. They’re a fit for us if they are the type of people we want to work with.”

“Good Company” is more than just a name, Stamps said; it also reflects a philosophy of striving to do the right thing. Core values include a growth mindset, care, curiosity, achievement and ownership – the sense that everyone at the company has a stake in client success.

“It’s important to us that we work with good people who align with our view of the world,” Stamps said. “They need to care about people as much as we care about ours.”