The modern checkout is a confident little machine. It remembers your card, predicts your address and offers delivery before you finish blinking. Then, for millions of shoppers outside the routes favored by large retailers, it stops cold. Country unavailable. Address rejected. Globbing built its business in that anticlimax. Register, receive a personal address in a country the store does serve, send the order there, and let Globbing move it the rest of the way. A parcel that once had nowhere to go acquires a route.
Founded in Armenia in 2015 by engineer and serial entrepreneur Davit Harutyunyan, with Vico Ghazar identified as co-founder and marketing chief, Globbing is part freight forwarder, part consumer app and part local pickup network. Its American address sits in sales-tax-free Delaware. Its warehouses aggregate purchases from the United States, Europe, China and other shopping hubs. Its software registers and tracks each box. Customs data follows. At destination, a service hall, courier or locker completes the journey.
A simple promise with five moving parts
To the customer, Globbing sells access. To the operator, it manages a relay race. A retailer first delivers to the shopper’s assigned warehouse address. Globbing must match the incoming label to an account, weigh and register the parcel, transport it internationally, help place the correct declaration in front of customs, and route the released box to a convenient endpoint. Every stage has different software, people and liability. The product works only when those seams disappear from view.
That sequence explains what makes Globbing different from an ordinary courier. A courier typically begins with a shippable parcel and a known destination. Globbing begins earlier, by making a purchase possible. Its “Buy for Me” agency service can step in when payment or merchant rules create another barrier. Its consumer tools combine address access, registration, declaration, payment, tracking and collection. Business customers can request special rates, while outbound service carries Armenian parcels to the United States.
“Globbing is a philosophy of shopping for people who value their time and money.”
Davit Harutyunyan, founder
The price of making “anywhere” specific
The business model is refreshingly physical. Customers usually pay according to origin, transport mode, and actual or volumetric weight. In Armenia, Globbing’s current calculator lists U.S. express delivery at AMD 6,000 per kilogram. U.S. standard service is AMD 1,500 per kilogram, with an AMD 15,000 minimum. China ground service is AMD 3,500 per kilogram and takes roughly 30 to 35 business days. Faster routes cost more because speed is purchased in aircraft capacity, not conjured by an app.
*The small print matters: U.S. standard has an AMD 15,000 minimum. Customs charges can also apply. In Armenia, declared value and weight thresholds determine when duties enter the calculation.
The audited numbers reveal a real logistics company beneath the bright mascot and mobile interface. Global Shipping LLC, the Armenian operating business, reported AMD 10.505 billion in consolidated 2024 revenue, almost all of it from delivery and freight forwarding. Profit was AMD 792.8 million. Revenue was slightly lower than in 2023, and profit roughly halved, a reminder that scale does not remove fuel, labor, rent, carrier and sorting costs.
What failed first: the handoff
The first publicly visible fracture was not the website. It was the gray area before a parcel entered Globbing’s custody. In 2019, complaints surfaced around a Russia-related route after customers said orders had become stranded. Harutyunyan answered that Globbing delivered parcels that reached its warehouses, but could not guarantee the performance of outside postal operators before that point. Contractually, the distinction was meaningful. Emotionally, it was almost useless. A shopper sees one order, not a stack of vendor agreements.
That episode captures the permanent weakness of forwarding: responsibility can be divided while trust cannot. A merchant, domestic carrier, warehouse, airline, customs authority and local courier may each handle the box. The customer still remembers the name on the app. Globbing’s answer over time has been to pull more of the journey into systems it can observe - warehouse automation, customs integration, barcode pickup, local halls and lockers - while publishing route updates when outside conditions change.
The model has faced a more formal trust problem too. Armenia’s competition authority imposed a roughly AMD 53 million fine after finding misleading-public practices. A serious profile cannot treat that as decorative turbulence. When a company sells certainty across an uncertain chain, the accuracy of its claims is part of the product.
Scale changed the operating thesis
Globbing reportedly began 2016 handling about 20 orders a day and ended the year with peak days near 730. The constraint moved quickly from convincing people to shop online to serving them without a queue. The company introduced terminals, automated halls and a German Vitronic conveyor system in its U.S. warehouse. Its site says barcode pickup can take about 10 seconds at equipped centers. By 2024, it reported its ten-millionth delivered parcel.
What appears to have changed management’s mind was not a rejection of the original idea but the evidence that the address alone was insufficient. At meaningful volume, the pickup point becomes a product, warehouse registration becomes a product, and customer education becomes a product. The company now advertises more than 150 Armenian pickup locations and lockers. Its 2025 bond prospectus described a plan for 13 new Kazakhstan service centers and 222 lockers, alongside digital services and a proposed acquisition of Online Shopping Network.
That expansion is being financed in public. Converse Bank placed Globbing’s debut three-year bonds, and the first AMD 1.5 billion and USD 2 million tranches completed early. In February 2026 they joined the Armenia Stock Exchange’s main bond list, making Globbing the first company in its sector represented there. The coupons - 12 percent for dram bonds and 8.25 percent for dollar bonds - also quantify the cost of building physical convenience.
The corridor is the unit of expansion
Globbing sits between e-commerce marketplaces and global parcel carriers. Its direct regional alternatives include Onex, Shipex, RobBot, Ber-Ber, Shipme.am and One Way Logistic. Customers can also choose direct retailer shipping or postal and express operators. Globbing’s advantage is not exclusive access to aircraft. It is a localized bundle: familiar language, a usable foreign address, shopper education, route-specific pricing, customs workflow and a nearby collection network.
Its market is therefore not “global logistics” in the abstract. It is a collection of corridors - America to Armenia, China to Kazakhstan, Germany to Uzbekistan - each with its own demand, customs rules, carrier reliability and pickup economics. The company’s multi-country websites and apps acknowledge that reality. The global brand stays recognizable; the operational promise is rewritten market by market.
Prove one origin-destination corridor before claiming a worldwide network. Density improves freight and pickup economics.
Give every user and parcel a durable code. The boring matching layer prevents expensive warehouse mysteries.
Once demand appears, automate registration and pickup before spending harder on acquisition.
Rates, declarations and restricted items are product content. Clear education lowers support load and builds trust.
Globbing’s newer Creators program makes that last point playful. Approved customers post unboxings, price comparisons or pickup demonstrations on Instagram and TikTok, then receive AMD 10,000 in delivery credit. It is marketing, but it also outsources instruction to people who have completed the journey. A demonstration of an unfamiliar customs-and-forwarding process can be more persuasive than another polished ad.
When the model does not work
Forwarding loses its appeal when the item is already available locally at a competitive price, when a light product triggers a high minimum fee, when returns matter, or when customs and oversized-package charges erase the savings. It also struggles when merchants block known forwarding addresses, a first-mile carrier cannot prove warehouse delivery, or low parcel density makes a route slow and expensive. The model rewards predictable volume and disciplined handoffs; it punishes edge cases.
A useful kind of middleman
The internet trained shoppers to regard middlemen as waste. Globbing is a case for the opposite view. A good intermediary does not merely stand between buyer and seller; it assembles services that neither side wants to build. Amazon need not design an Armenian locker network. An Armenian shopper need not negotiate with six carriers. Globbing absorbs that coordination and charges for the weight moving through it.
The giraffe mascot named George gives the system a friendly face, but the durable achievement is less cute: a regional company found a neglected seam in global commerce and kept adding infrastructure until the seam began to resemble a road. The checkout still abandons plenty of shoppers. Globbing’s bet is that the route home can be a business large enough to finance warehouses, lockers and its own place in the capital market.