The future of retail - another way?

Because we meet so many people exploring new ideas for the future, I have a 70,000 ft chance to observe and contribute to some of the best.  Once such chance came yesterday when I was chatting with James Governor about a potential new home delivery venture.

The idea at heart is incredibly simple - the great mass of single and co-habiting people - particularly those in urban environments - go out to work all day so have nowhere convenient to have products delivered that they order on Amazon or wherever else.

Wouldn't it be great, we thought, if when you were ordering items online, you could specify, rather than opting for faster delivery, to have the products delivered to a 'safe house'.  So instead of the product being sent to your address and bouncing off to a depot as a non-delivery, it goes to someone else's house in your street - somebody who is a signed up safe house member. 

Each time someone clicks the safe house option at an online store, they can see a list of local safe houses in their area, with user ratings on the reliability and possibly some comments about the person.

Delivering to one of these locations costs the buyer a few pounds or dollars - say 3 quid (6 dollars) - when ordering the goods.  The Safe House member, on the other hand, simply agrees to spend the day at home - or at least agrees that somebody will be in - to accept deliveries.  They get paid about a third of that just to accept the parcel and pass it on to the person it is for when he or she drops by. 

Safe House takes the rest of the fee - it's in the interest of the retailer to have places to deliver things, so their business expands anyway which is how they gain.  Postage and packing is simply carried out as normal - no change there, no alternative logistics required, etc.  Not all safe houses need be of the same reliability - someone who guarantees absolutely to be in (and remember they have a reputation online to protect) can charge more.  Some customers might be willing to pay up to a tenner - or even more.  Likewise a cheaper safe house might at worst mean the odd delay as a delivery is missed.  Either way you can track online to find out when the item has arrived and maybe even contact the person in the safe house to check when they'll be in.

Now clearly there are some privacy implications here (I'm hoping the likes of Graham Sadd will come to the rescue there).  It may be that only some safe houses can be used by anyone.  Others are joined by invitation - a person may announce to their neighbours that they are acting as one.  So that way you don't get all and sundry sending you stuff.  But of course, there's a financial incentive for people to accept as much stuff as they can.

There are several spin-off implications:

First, it highlights how inadequate and off target the existing infrastructure of post office branches is and how it is not supporting internet commerce. While a post office lets you send parcels, most aren't so great at accepting them and most people don't have one next door (which is frankly where they want to be).  Here in Britain, where the pressure is on to close down many smaller branch offices, the usual argument for keeping them open is that many smaller communities rely on the interaction.  Perhaps after years of angst something like a safe house could fill that need better.

Second, it's likely that in places like London, where most neighbours keep themselves to themselves, the interaction in the local community would actually increase as people call around to collect parcels, food deliveries, etc.

Third, you don't need just one safe house network doing this.  There's the potential for numerous networks to launch in competition.

And the final, rather amusing implication, is that this club creates a way for people to earn money simply sitting at home all day.

Now how cool is that?

Posted by Mark Charmer, 1 February 2007

Updated on 3/9/08. James and I got distracted with other projects. I still think this has legs.

Comments

[Ric]

One etailer here in Australia was using local petrol stations as a drop-off depot - given that more petrol stations are staying open 24/7, this struck me as a good idea, and with one just around the corner, I used it a couple of times. The problem I found was lack of familiarity with the correct process from the operator, but it worked. They don't seem to offer it any more, so I suspect that the deal was wrong at (at least) one end, but it still seems a reasonable approach. Personally i get my Amazon/wishlist/Redmonk stuff delivered to the office because there's always someone at the front desk, but this doesn't scale!

[Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson]

We have this to some degree already with a lockable post box system, where I live (in Sweden). However, it doesn't swallow four bags of shopping, more like a couple of Amazon boxes at the most.

However, with more people working from home you could have a drop-off service as part of your home business. The only problem would be for perishables, as it would be difficult to take care of 20 bags of shopping for the neighbourhood and store the milk etc. somewhere sensible.

Maybe having a local grocery store instead which works as a local drop off point? Which is just what we have around where I live. The grocery store doubles up as a post office and you go there and pick up the parcels which are too big for your lockable post-box. Then you can buy some perishables at the same time...

[Isabel Wang]

In Taiwan, etailers deliver your purchases to the nearest 7-11, which then sends you SMS confirmation. (I counted at least five 7-11s within easy walking distance from my mother's apartment.) They also collect parking fines, notarize documents, print photos, etc.

But I like your idea better.