Amazon ordered more Mercedes delivery vans for entrepreneurs who signed up to start businesses moving the retailers’ packages. Currently, with 10,000 applicants, we can guesstimate that the typical entreprenuerial delivery operator will operate an average of two vans. Assuming one of the drivers at each startup is an owner at first, the program will create […]
Tag: delivery
Instacart is dramatically expanding the services it can offer retailer customers with its $65 million acquisition of Unata, a Toronto-based developer of retail software. Bloomberg and TechCrunch cover the details of the deal. Why does it matter? On-demand companies traditionally focus on the last-mile, putting people to work delivering and providing services to the home. […]
Ford today announced a partnership with Postmates to expand on-demand services for small business at CES. Postmates reports that SMBs joining its network see “4X revenue growth” and claims it has the most extensive on-demand delivery fleet in the U.S. A variety of companies will enter this space in 2018, among them HERE Technologies which […]
Scale doesn’t come easy, as flower delivery startup BloomThat has found. The company, which reportedly has lowered its burn rate to just $15,000 a month after raising $7.5 million nine months ago, was purchased by FTD. TechCrunch said the company was purchased for “a small amount of money.” BloomThat has struggled to acheive scale, or […]
A van containing a 3D printer arrives at your front curb, the plumber knocks and, granted entrance, checks your sink downspout, which is leaking. Problem identified, she calls up the broken part on her computer and prints it in the van, installs the new downspout, and finishes the job. No inventory to carry around, just […]