By Marc Gorlin, Founder and CEO of Roadie
This year, Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday – and that’s a big problem for retailers.
How do your favorite stores get last-minute gifts delivered when traditional shipping companies aren’t on the road?
UPS and FedEx don’t make regular deliveries that day and the U.S. Postal Service’s Sunday packages are almost entirely for Amazon, which is already pounding on retailers with same-day delivery dominance.
What can retailers do this Dec. 24?
They could cut off internet orders earlier. They could eat the cost of overnight shipping. Or they could give up on last-minute sales of big-ticket items at their brick-and-mortar stores because shoppers may not readily have a large enough vehicle to get their purchases home.
All of those scenarios mean lost sales or higher costs, which retailers can’t afford in this era of record store closures and retailer bankruptcies.
The most innovative retailers are exploring alternative delivery options, but they’re finding that most are basically on-demand, “Uber-for-packages” — mobile-enabled courier services with high costs per stop, small geographic footprints, limited delivery distance and restrictions on size.
Roadie is different.
We’re the only collaborative delivery network with nearly 50,000 pre-screened drivers covering all 50 states. Roadie has delivered to more than 4,000 cities and towns nationwide — a similar footprint to Amazon Prime Now.
Our app lets retailers leverage existing resources such as employees, store customers and other people in the local community to deliver items faster and with better per-trip economics than ever before. It’s a model we call “Collaborative Delivery,” and it’s enabling retailers to compete in the hyper-competitive age of Amazon where consumers have come to expect same-day and next-day delivery.
The savviest retailers are investigating ways to win Christmas delivery, and some are already investing in a collaborative delivery solution.
For example, Roadie is working with one particular retailer that has more than 1,500 stores nationwide to have employees, customers and other drivers in the community fulfill and deliver items through both online and in-store channels, and they are closing more sales and have higher customer satisfaction as a result.
Others include a major department store chain, a Los Angeles-based e-commerce company and a large U.S. airline who are also making deliveries through Roadie in cities all across the country.
Walmart recently started a pilot test to have their employees deliver items on their way home, and BestBuy once had employees deliver packages from stores when a blizzard stranded items at warehouses. We’re glad others are starting to realize it’s such a good idea — not to mention faster, more efficient, and more sustainable.
Tapping into an existing fleet of vehicles already traveling to and from stores creates a completely new type of delivery system with ultimate flexibility on variable volumes, distance and cost. This helps retailers increase sales with a minimal impact on margins. With Christmas Eve just around the corner, retailers have a great opportunity to innovate with a new type of delivery model and capture more of the $658 billion spent on holiday gifts each year.
Collaborative Delivery might just be the innovation that saves Christmas.
