Taskrabbit style fulfilment center £1.20 all parcel up to 3kg

[taerese]

Hello!

Would anyone be interested in a fulfilment center that will employ a task rabbit style to deliver your parcel of up to 7kg for only £1.50 or £1.20 for up to 3kg. All signed for. Upto £50 insurance.

BUT if your order is to be delivered to an area that is not covered by the service then you will pay 25p in handling fee + third party courier fee for the fulfilment center to transfer your parcel to a third party courier e.g Hermes.

[Lucifer]

please share more details. Thanks

[RosieTosie]

That's a good price, depends where they are and what they consider to be out of their area, in a country as small as this one as well bit surprised anywhere in the UK would be out of their area, guess that's how they make their money though.

[aniseed]

Defo give us more details

[Haidukken]

Thats the kinds post my wet dreams are made out of. PM for details, much appreciated.

[Bunneh]

Very vague..Sounds like this is something the op wants to start up.

[taerese]

Hi Guys!

This is only an idea I wanted to run through the forums to measure your interest as I have noticed and you all know that as sellers, we are all loosing so much revenue on postage.

This is how it will work.
You send your parcels to a fulfilment centre in Manchester, London or Birmingham. If a parcel, for instance, in Manchester weighing up to 7kg is to be delivered to a location in London/Birmingham/Manchester, you will pay up to £1.50 and it will be delivered within 7 working days, however, if you wish to deliver your parcel to any location outside of these 3 cities then you will pay btw 0.25P and 50P + third party courier fee for the fulfilment center to transfer your parcel to a third party courier e.g Hermes.
We will expand to other fulfilment centres in other cities as the business grows.


How we will fulfil your orders:
We will transfer your parcels nightly btw our fulfilment centers and employ ordinary pple and local taxis to deliver the parcels to your customers. Everyone who wish to act as a local courier will be subject to a criminal record checks and possibly pay a security bond or require guarantors

Challenges.
This is only an IDEA and subject to further feasibility studies. Measure of your interest and bureaucratic requirement to run a parcel/delivery service.

[wired]

So people would have to pay say Royal Mail to post the items to your warehouse, or are you treating it as a drop shipping type of affair, so all stock would go to you, and you would pick and post it?

Also, seven days postage? thats worse than using Hermes for £2.50 at the moment, ebayers hate Hermes and ebay hates long postage times.

At this stage, Im confused how this would work out more convenient and cheaper than just posting the items using Royal Mail to be honest. One might save a quid or so here or there, but seems like a lot of added risk involving another party in the chain for not much benefit?

[taerese]

Originally Posted by wired

So people would have to pay say Royal Mail to post the items to your warehouse, or are you treating it as a drop shipping type of affair, so all stock would go to you, and you would pick and post it?

As a fulfilment center, you are required to get your stock to the center, the way you can. Sure you dont have prob getting your stock to Amazon fulfilment center so shouldn't be a problem getting it to our fulfilment center if you were you use our service.

Originally Posted by wired

Also, seven days postage? thats worse than using Hermes for £2.50 at the moment, ebayers hate Hermes and ebay hates long postage times.

Yeah, I understand 7 days is too long, but thats the price to pay for the service. A lot of goods you buy from China on ebay will take from 2 weeks to 30 days. Buyers are comfortable with that and so is ebay as long as it is mentioned in your listing.

Like seriously? Hermes for £2.50? When last did you use hermes bro. Hermes start at £2.78 for the smallest of parcel 0-1kg. and £7.69 for 5-10kg.

There is no risk to you cause we have insurance. A bit of incoviniece, if packaging all your stuff to a fulfilment centre is an inconviniece. For hermes or Royalmail, you'll have to do the pick and pack but but we do all of this for you. I cant help if this is still an inconvenience

If royalmail or hermes or DHL will charge you less than £2.50 for a 5-7kg parcel then this service is not for you.


Like I said, this is only an ideal and does not mean it would ever come to light

[Haidukken]

Interesting, but whats your background? Track record? If you have previous experience in the field, I'm all ear but if you have never done logistics before then I'll pass because without previous experience I can only see this going horribly tits up.
It's one thing to come up with good ideas and think of a plan, but when it comes to parcels and logistics, you really do need some sort of previous experience because when it goes wrong, you literally have 24h at MAX to resolve this and by the looks of it, you haven't really put the plan into action yet, so there are to many changing asepcts of the plan.


As an idea, GREAT. In reality.... I don't know yet.

[wired]

Originally Posted by taerese

As a fulfilment center, you are required to get your stock to the center, the way you can. Sure you dont have prob getting your stock to Amazon fulfilment center so shouldn't be a problem getting it to our fulfilment center if you were you use our service.


Yeah, I understand 7 days is too long, but thats the price to pay for the service. A lot of goods you buy from China on ebay will take from 2 weeks to 30 days. Buyers are comfortable with that and so is ebay as long as it is mentioned in your listing.

Like seriously? Hermes for £2.50? When last did you use hermes bro. Hermes start at £2.78 for the smallest of parcel 0-1kg. and £7.69 for 5-10kg.

There is no risk to you cause we have insurance. A bit of incoviniece, if packaging all your stuff to a fulfilment centre is an inconviniece. For hermes or Royalmail, you'll have to do the pick and pack but but we do all of this for you. I cant help if this is still an inconvenience

If royalmail or hermes or DHL will charge you less than £2.50 for a 5-7kg parcel then this service is not for you.


Like I said, this is only an ideal and does not mean it would ever come to light

I have a merchant account with Hermes that I no longer use, I was paying much less than £2.50 but put that in as an average.

Thanks for clarification on the fufillment, thats what I was referring to as I wasnt sure, you didnt mention that, but man, thats one big warehouse your going to need but is doable if you have the start up capital to achieve it.

The reasons why people buy direct from China and wait weeks is to buy them at chinese prices (partly because of their government subsidised postal systems) and also as there is no middle man, no uk vat that sellers have to add on etc. People pay extra to buy items from the UK to get a quicker service, seven days for me personally is much to long. Ebayers that use next day delivery and Royal Mail do better than those using Hermes because of Hermes snail mail process.

Its a great idea, but what would your insurance be if the parcel was delivered late? as well all know, ebay takes no prisoners on late parcels!

Food for thought for you anyway if nothing else.