The massive River North office complex formerly home to Groupon now bears the name of another local company, making the tech startup’s departure from its longtime home on Chicago Avenue complete.
Echo Global Logistics, a transportation and supply chain management firm, renovated a portion of its space in the old Montgomery Ward catalog building to consolidate two floors the company used previously into one expanded, collaborative workspace, the company said in a news release Tuesday. New signs with Echo’s logo were installed on the corners of the building, where the Groupon name once loomed over the river.
“It’s a beautiful space with a great atmosphere and amenities that combine form and function to ensure our growing team has a place to thrive and continue the Echo success story for years to come,” Pete Rogers, Echo’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.
The building, 600 W. Chicago Ave., has 1.65 million square feet of space with offices and other amenities. Echo employs about 1,100 people and takes up 185,000 square feet, becoming the building’s second-largest tenant behind biotech company Tempus, which has two floors with a little over 200,000 square feet and 1,500 employees, according to CoStar, a provider of commercial real estate data.
Echo started as a “single conference room” in the same building in 2005, CEO Doug Waggoner said in a statement. The company now has 30 locations with thousands of employees around the country and works with 35,000 businesses that need to ship products and 50,000 carrier partners that can transport goods. Every day, Echo handles some 16,000 shipments.
“As one of Chicago’s largest tech employers, it’s fitting that our team works hard in a building with the Echo logo on it, visible for the entire city to see,” Waggoner said in the statement.
Echo recently announced cross-border services in Mexico as well and opened three new offices in Mexico City, Monterrey, Mexico, and Laredo, Texas.
In a statement Tuesday, Groupon spokesperson Mike Tepeli said the company’s former River North space had been vacant since early February.
Groupon early this year moved its Chicago office to the 25th floor of the Leo Burnett building at 35 W. Wacker Drive, going from 300,000 square feet in River North to 25,000 square feet in the Loop. After years of revenue declines, the company ended its lease at 600 W. Chicago two years early and instituted a series of cost-cutting initiatives including hundreds of layoffs. Its total headcount was down to 2,213 employees at the end of last year, including 393 in North America, according to its most recent annual report.
Launched in 2008, Groupon had more than 11,000 employees worldwide at its peak in 2012 but has since seen demand for its online deals business decline, leading the company to issue a warning last spring about its ability to continue as a going concern.
The company has since resolved its going concern issue and announced a positive operating cash flow in the fourth quarter ending Dec. 31, but revenue was still down 7% from the same period in 2022.
The company posted $514.9 million in revenue for 2023, down 14% over the prior year, according to its latest earnings report. Net losses were $52.9 million for the year, compared with $234.4 million in 2022, according to the report.
