We speak more than ever about store digitization, and initiatives from famous French and international firms are flowing: Sephora develops numerous experiments, Unibail-Rodamco launched last year its corporate incubator…
Nevertheless, others ways can be followed in order to propose new customer experiences and differentiate yourself, all that without even going through a concept store: delivery is a new field of innovation, and companies like Igloo, Happy Returns and Colissimo did understand it.
Igloo is a Parisian start-up created 2 years ago and incubated at the Look Forward incubator. Its concept ? Let’s shop at Home ! After ordering 5 articles online, Igloo offers you to be delivered for 1€. The very same night, you can then try clothes in your living room, far from the busyness of stores, and only keep the ones you prefer: a delivery man will come back the next day to collect the rest, avoiding you all the paperwork. You will pay only the clothes you kept. Pretty useful, isn’t it? Investors found so, and injected 500 000€ in the company at the beginning of 2016.
Happy Returns, a Los Angeles-based start-up company, is also willing to ease your life during online shopping. The firm, founded by former employees of HauteLook, JustFab & Google, avoids you the queue and hard work in order to send back an item bought online: you only have to directly deposit unwanted products in its return bars, and get refund immediately. Happy Returns then takes care of the rest! The start-up is willing to expand rapidly, thanks to a recent fundraising of 1.9 million dollars.
Of course, it seems weird not to mention La Poste when you talk about delivery. The French company is still the leader of the market in France. The group founded more than 100 year ago still continues to innovation, focusing on the need of its clients: recently, the firm introduced deliveries from 5 to 8 P.M in large cities, with a success rate rising at 95% for first-try deliveries.
But if you want to change your habits, others solutions has also been implemented, such as Pick-Up. Thanks to connected closets, situated in locations (like train stations), it is now possible to recover your packages with a simple code, during one of your daily commutation and with no hour-limits! Today, there are more than 6,500 websites already using the Pick-up network, which is the most expanded in Europe with more than 22100 retrieving points in 15 countries.
Finally, La Poste also made an impression at the Las Vegas 2016 CES with a new product called Domino: after installing this small module (compatible with Wifi & SigFox networks) on your mailbox, it is now possible to send whatever item you want to easily. You just have to activate your domino online, deposit your item in your mailbox and give the address you want to send it to. The mailman is then notified, recover your item, package and label it. Quite revolutionary, isn’t it? This new Colissimo service is already set up in some areas since the start of 2016, and other services might come: the Domino was built to be universal and personalized from the start, explains La Poste.
THE LOOK FORWARD PERSPECTIVE:
Delivery, the basic principle that made online retail possible, still have bright days to come! If the industry already used technology to innovate on internal processes, digital helping to reinvent logistics and experiment always faster deliveries; the majors actors of the sector had not yet adopted the customer-centric philosophy of young start-ups from the digital revolution.
It is now done, with differentiating models that are more practical, qualitative, and offer real customer experiences!