The USA has been dabbling with same day fulfilment delivery for a while now, with retail giants such as Walmart, Amazon and Ebay all offering a one hour delivery from point of order. “Ebay Now” is based on the company’s acquisition of Milo, a local shopping start-up that lists real-time in-store product inventory for over 50,000 stores across the country; featuring over 3m products.
Since that 2010 acquisition, Ebay has gone on to acquire Shutl over here in the UK, which provides a network of couriers to deliver local goods within a couple of hours of an online purchase. Together, the two companies have partnered with UK-retailer Argos to offer a Click & Collect and fulfilment solutions.
While local delivery in metropolitan locations such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago will probably remain a niche solution, delivery combined with fulfilment options will prove the winner in the same-day race as evident by Amazon’s fulfilment facility building frenzy here in the UK as well as the well reported one hour delivery in central London. eBay is following suit with its facility in Manchester as well as its relationship with Argos. Along with traditional fulfilment solutions, it offers “modular, cloud-based SAAS solutions” such as ship-from-store, in-store pickup and ship-to-store. In other words, its omni-channel solution offers quick, nimble and agile solutions for retailers in the fast changing retail industry.
Amazon’s Prime customers in central London can now achieve a same day delivery with every order over £20, and all for just £6.99 per order for delivery within one hour. Delivery in a two-hour window is at no additional cost between 8am and midnight, seven days a week.
The only way a retailer can offer this service in line with the likes of Amazon and Ebay is if goods can be despatched within close proximity of the delivery location – Not achievable for most ecommerce retailers. Is this just another way for the giants to squeeze out its already frail competition?
Diamond Logistics “Actual Warehouse” product has been designed to allow smaller retailers to compete with the giants. Our extensive network of same day service centres each act as a fulfilment house or “retail hub”, which in turn allows our clients to store across multiple locations nationwide. Once an order is processed by our integrated warehouse management system (WMS), the pick request filter by the closest service centre to the delivery location and therefore minimises the mileage between hub and delivery destination.
With our ever expanding same day courier fleet, Diamond Logistics aim to partner with UK businesses to deliver in this challenging retail market sector.
So, what are the retail benefits of offering a same day delivery facility to the consumer? How about increased order values? Research in the U.S suggests that the consumer will spend between 30-100% extra online if a same day delivery is available. A staggering 83% of consumers say they would be more likely to shop with a retailer if a same day delivery solution was on offer.
If these statistics weren’t enough, how about the consistently high service levels? With same day delivery generating almost a 100% delivery success rate against the, at best 97% overnight B2C statistics, it’s clear to see that same day fulfilment is not just a fad of the future.
Daniel Allin
Chief Operating Officer
Diamond Logistics Limited
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