Disruptive web brings shipping revolution
importance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the battle between the two US giants of ecommerce – eBay and Amazon.
In the case of Amazon, this has seen the Bezos crowd undertake a long line of shipping innovations to ensure customers get their stuff quicker and cheaper.
It started with a set of regional fulfilment centres to cut down the time it took to get commoditised items to their buyers. Today Amazon has over 30 across the States, and last year it bought warehouse automators Kiva to accelerate this growth.
Two years ago, it started experimenting with same-day shipping (the item is delivered the same day you buy it) in Seattle – today they offer it in 11 large cities. With a few category exceptions, Amazon now offers free domestic shipping on all goods worth more more than US$35. They also have Amazon Prime, a US$80 a year subscription service that offers ‘‘free’’ two-day domestic delivery for all items.
Amazon’s arch enemy eBay has been no slouch either. A year ago it launched eBay Now, a localised immediate delivery service where people buy stuff from a nearby shop and get it delivered to their door in as little as an hour. Originally a mobile app, today eBay Now spans an app, touch site and full web service, but only works in a few big American cities.
Then last week eBay further upped the ante, buying Shutl, a marketplace that harnesses a network of couriers to deliver local goods on a same-day basis. Apparently this will lead to better fulfilment for the increased localised buying demand.
According to its website, Shutl can get an item to you in less than 15 minutes from the time of online purchase, a pretty dizzying concept.
However, while this race to the bottom in terms of shipping times and shipping costs has been going on among the biggies of the ecommerce world, the more interesting question for me is when the disruptive power of the web will start delivering significant peer-to-peer shipping services.
Think of it as a shipping version of Airbnb, the accommodation service that makes every householder a hotelier. But rather than spare rooms or empty baches, the units of currency are the millions of car owners driving places every day.
It’s started to happen overseas already. CitizenShipper allows drivers of virtually any kind of vehicle to enter a kind of reverse auction where they bid for courier jobs that people have put up on a load board. And the premise is very simple – if I am driving from A to B anyway, why not take a box or a cat carrier or a TV, and make an extra $50 (or whatever).
CitizenShipper now has 36,000 active drivers registered in the US and is expanding into Canada.
New Zealand is a sitter for this kind of operation, given its compact size, homogenous nature and the fact that 50 per cent of its population live in three cities (80 per cent in seven); cities that people drive between every day.
Local startup Payload is already in this space and I imagine won’t be the last.
The creative disruption of the web, together with its ability to let people organise themselves, will bring massive change for industries like shipping.
And it means the next time my mate Deano wants a bike brought back from Picton he won’t have to wait six weeks for a mug like me to volunteer.
Mike ‘‘MOD’’ O’Donnell is an e-commerce manager and professional director. His Twitter handle is @modsta.