Kevin - What if Amazon, UPS, Fedex start picking up consumers items?
This appears to be your unique advantage which reminds me a lot of Instacart/Uber in a sense of bringing the solution to the customer instead of having the customer coming to you.
This appears to be your unique advantage which reminds me a lot of Instacart/Uber in a sense of bringing the solution to the customer instead of having the customer coming to you.
Our unique advantage is our product/experience UX and our focus on packaging. UPS, Fedex, USPS and our other partners all love us. They see us filling a much needed gap in the market. Just as stripe does for visa/mc/etc.
What these shipping companies are the best at is moving many packed items over large distances. Their logistics networks are unparalleled to no one. We just see a large gap in the first mile.
We have the barrier of a warehouse in every city + packers but just like anything once you do something enough times you get really good at it.
Looking to be extremely aggressive on city rollout.
I'm assuming when you do you are going to be locating your warehouse near Fedex/UPS depots then?
I think creating a business that resold on Amazon would be smarter. It's less work, easier to price, and the customers there are willing to pay more than on eBay. You would be limited to only taking items that Amazon has in their system though. I was going to work on this (actually selling on a combo of Amazon/Craigslist/eBay), but I had the most hellacious back and forth string of emails and phone calls with Amazon's tech support only to confirm that they require $500/year developer fees for the privilege of developing software that works with their marketplace web services api. And unlike Apple where you only have to start paying once you wish to deploy an app into their app store, with Amazon you have to pay while developing the app too.
We don't consider Berkeley or Oakland as new cities as we can provide service from one warehouse. We will be overing service to those areas very shortly.
Interesting idea, the "milk run" has the advantage of being energy/cost efficient for UPS, but if you have Uber-like drivers that are willing to put a package in their trunk and drop it to a Shyp warehouse for a cheap price, why not!
Your organization is fulfilling the instant gratification need that the bigger guys aren't delivering on which is the value and revenue opportunity.
Did you start this company with the Uber ah ha moment? ie. why can't I push a button to do this or was it a pain point that evolved into a business model?
I imagine it works great if you have an account, volume, and dedicated staff + shipping area. But for consumers, it's not tempting.
I've donated some items I could have sold due to the annoyance. (You might think that would be a better outcome, but most of the items were pretty specific, and unlikely to find a good home through donation)