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What would a startup do that they couldn't? Please correct me if I am wrong, but there are no domestic delivery services that offer: 1. Realtime tracking. 2.

What would a startup do that they couldn't? Please correct me if I am wrong, but there are no domestic delivery services that offer: 1. Realtime tracking. 2. SMS upon delivery failure or address confusion. 3. Deliver to you not to your home. #3 is probably hard, but 1 & 2 should be fairly straightforward.

gabrielroth 16y ago
When I wrote 'What would a startup do that they couldn't?' I wasn't asking 'What services would a startup provide for end-customers that aren't provided by existing couriers?' I was asking 'How would a startup make a profit in this hard-to-enter market when Amazon, with all its advantages, has apparently decided it can't?' Do you think Amazon couldn't provide realtime tracking or SMS notification? Those things are frills. They'd be nice. Maybe a few end-customers would pay slightly more for them. But they don't help you with the real problem, which is setting up a hub-and-spoke delivery network that's fine-grained enough to get a package from a central warehouse to any individual house in the country within three days for less than five bucks. You, the person waiting for your package at home, are not the customer. The customer is Amazon. What the customer wants is delivery that's sufficiently reliable that it doesn't cost them business, and sufficiently cheap that it doesn't interfere with their efforts to undersell traditional retailers. Can you make them a viable offer on those grounds? If not, SMS notifications aren't going to change their mind.
- binarymax 16y ago
  You, the person waiting for your package at home, are not the customer. This is a good wake-up call that I had not considered. The suggestion by samstokes above for Shutl seems quite interesting, hopefully it is viable. Also it is strange to me that a pizza is delivered 100% of the time yet a package success rate is much less - they seem to have the last-mile problem solved. Maybe all HDNL and the like need to do is pick up the damn phone when they can't deliver!
  - rlivsey 16y ago
    Pizza deliveries are all basically that last-mile, you're not normally ordering a pizza from another city/country. That means the company has lots of individual restaurants with their own delivery operations (guys on bikes) who handle that last mile on an individual basis, or maybe doing a couple of pizzas at a time. If you've ordered a pizza, then you're also pretty much guaranteed to be at home. There's not much point leaving a note saying your pizza was taken back to the depot or left with your neighbour!
  - gabrielroth 16y ago
    It's a whole different problem when the range of possible delivery addresses is within a square mile.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
    As others replied, it's much easier for pizza because the delivery area is so small. Usually. I'm an example of an outlier; I live in a rural area and if I go to Domino's website, there is no delivery to my house. However, I know that if I call the local Domino's that's 10 miles away, they will deliver. Problem is that there is a high rate of phone calls from drivers that say "I'm lost," "Your house isn't where they said it was," "Are you sure you live on xxx st? I drove from one end to the other and the address doesn't exist." I've learned to keep my phone near me if I order pizza because I'm likely to have to give the driver explicit instructions on how to get here. OTOH, USPS, FedEx and UPS have absolutely no problem finding my house.
mason55 16y ago
> 2. SMS upon delivery failure or address confusion. Amazon actually just started offering SMS upon delivery failure/success, at least in the US.
gaius 16y ago
There are, or nearly, I don't recall their name offhand but my bank has used them to get a card to me. I never needed your point 2, but point 3, they said on the phone, where are you, we'll come find you, and the courier just wanted to see my passport before handing it over. I don't doubt they cost considerably more than Amazon delivery costs (GBP 49/year for unlimited deliveries to any address in my address book). Ultimately there's nothing I buy online that I care that much about that I can't wait a few days for Amazon to re-send it and hopefully randomly choose someone who isn't HDNL or Citylink.

gabrielroth 16y ago

When I wrote 'What would a startup do that they couldn't?' I wasn't asking 'What services would a startup provide for end-customers that aren't provided by existing couriers?' I was asking 'How would a startup make a profit in this hard-to-enter market when Amazon, with all its advantages, has apparently decided it can't?' Do you think Amazon couldn't provide realtime tracking or SMS notification? Those things are frills. They'd be nice. Maybe a few end-customers would pay slightly more for them. But they don't help you with the real problem, which is setting up a hub-and-spoke delivery network that's fine-grained enough to get a package from a central warehouse to any individual house in the country within three days for less than five bucks. You, the person waiting for your package at home, are not the customer. The customer is Amazon. What the customer wants is delivery that's sufficiently reliable that it doesn't cost them business, and sufficiently cheap that it doesn't interfere with their efforts to undersell traditional retailers. Can you make them a viable offer on those grounds? If not, SMS notifications aren't going to change their mind.

binarymax 16y ago
You, the person waiting for your package at home, are not the customer. This is a good wake-up call that I had not considered. The suggestion by samstokes above for Shutl seems quite interesting, hopefully it is viable. Also it is strange to me that a pizza is delivered 100% of the time yet a package success rate is much less - they seem to have the last-mile problem solved. Maybe all HDNL and the like need to do is pick up the damn phone when they can't deliver!
- rlivsey 16y ago
  Pizza deliveries are all basically that last-mile, you're not normally ordering a pizza from another city/country. That means the company has lots of individual restaurants with their own delivery operations (guys on bikes) who handle that last mile on an individual basis, or maybe doing a couple of pizzas at a time. If you've ordered a pizza, then you're also pretty much guaranteed to be at home. There's not much point leaving a note saying your pizza was taken back to the depot or left with your neighbour!
- gabrielroth 16y ago
  It's a whole different problem when the range of possible delivery addresses is within a square mile.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
  As others replied, it's much easier for pizza because the delivery area is so small. Usually. I'm an example of an outlier; I live in a rural area and if I go to Domino's website, there is no delivery to my house. However, I know that if I call the local Domino's that's 10 miles away, they will deliver. Problem is that there is a high rate of phone calls from drivers that say "I'm lost," "Your house isn't where they said it was," "Are you sure you live on xxx st? I drove from one end to the other and the address doesn't exist." I've learned to keep my phone near me if I order pizza because I'm likely to have to give the driver explicit instructions on how to get here. OTOH, USPS, FedEx and UPS have absolutely no problem finding my house.

mason55 16y ago

> 2. SMS upon delivery failure or address confusion. Amazon actually just started offering SMS upon delivery failure/success, at least in the US.

gaius 16y ago

There are, or nearly, I don't recall their name offhand but my bank has used them to get a card to me. I never needed your point 2, but point 3, they said on the phone, where are you, we'll come find you, and the courier just wanted to see my passport before handing it over. I don't doubt they cost considerably more than Amazon delivery costs (GBP 49/year for unlimited deliveries to any address in my address book). Ultimately there's nothing I buy online that I care that much about that I can't wait a few days for Amazon to re-send it and hopefully randomly choose someone who isn't HDNL or Citylink.