Checking in with ChargeItSpot, maker of the shopper-friendly charging station

Eight-year-old ChargeItSpot, maker of retailed-placed charging stations, recently raised some money and is planning another year of steady growth.

The Bourse-based company recently raised $2.5 million, bringing the total raised over the company’s lifetime to $15 million.

CEO Douglas Baldasare said the fundraising was a follow-on by the company’s previous investors. While Baldasare didn’t want to share who those investors are, Technical.ly previously reported that investors included local angel group Robin Hood Ventures, equity crowdfunding platform SeedInvest and Morristown, New Jersey-based SoundBoard Angel Fund.

When we checked in with the company a few years ago, the ChargeItSpot team was made up of about 30 — 12 full timers and 18 part timers. Now, the company has about 130 full- and part-time employees across the country, many maintaining machines in the 42 states ChargeItSpot services, Baldasare said. The Philly HQ, now on the ninth floor of The Bourse, there are about 30 full-time employees.

The company has also expanded its presence to three countries outside the U.S. — Mexico, Canada and Australia. There are about 40 charging stations in the Philly area, Baldasare said, and just shy of 1,100 overall.

That growth has allowed the company to hit more milestones on number of customers (and phone batteries) served.

“It took us four years to charge our first million phones, and now we’re charging about a million phones every 100 days,” the CEO said. 

Baldasare said that in surveys that the company had run or in third-party research, most people say that their phone battery life is either staying the same (22%) or getting worse (52%). And on the retailer side, they found that shoppers who charge their phone while they shop end up spending extra time in the store and more money at checkout. With that data, and the additional funding, the company is looking at continued growth and some more hiring in 2020.

🙌 https://t.co/HL8g7nM1Qz

— ChargeItSpot (@ChargeItSpot) January 27, 2020

The company has also recently released a feature that will allow clients’ retail apps to recognize when a battery is running at or below 30% and suggest a retail store nearby with a charging station. For example, your phone might alert you that your battery is low and that you could go charge at the Banana Republic (one of the company’s retailers) on Walnut Street, which is 2.1 miles away from your current location.

Other Philly retailers carrying the charging station include Bloomingdale’s, North Face, Target and Marshall’s. You can also spot them across town at the University of Pennsylvania, Comcast and Lincoln Financial Field.