Peer-to-peer delivery startup Deliv wants to provide a new way for major retailers to offer up same-day delivery to their customers. And it just partnered with one of the biggest mall operators in the country, General Growth Properties, to begin making that vision a reality.
Deliv is kind of like Lyft or SideCar in that it isn’t building out a big fleet infrastructure of trucks and drivers to make deliveries for it. Instead, it’s looking to crowdsource drivers to make delivery runs in their own cars. By doing so, it massively reduces costs associated with deliveries, while also enabling brick-and-mortar retailers to provide speedy deliveries that beat Amazon Prime.
To make the plan work, Deliv needs to get retailers on board. And that’s where GGP comes in.
GGP is the second-largest mall operator in the country, with 123 regional malls nationwide. And it’s got hundreds of millions of square feet of shopping space, according to Scott Morey, Chief Information and Technology Officer of GGP. In that respect, it’s not that different from a bunch of big warehouses around the country, he said. Which means that retailers can almost use the malls like Amazon uses its various distribution outlets.
The pact will enable a mix of online and offline sales and deliveries to occur through stores that sign up in select GGP malls. In the online case, shoppers going to certain retailers’ e-commerce sites will be able to add items to their cart and then select same-day delivery from the store. At the mall, runners will collect the goods and hand them off to a Deliv driver.
But the partnership will also enable deliveries to be made on purchases made in-store at certain GGP malls. In that way, customers will be able to buy from multiple stores and have their purchases aggregated in one spot before delivering to a user’s home. That’ll be perfect for folks who came on shopping trips together with friends or who took public transportation to the mall in question.
In either case, the service is designed to make the deliveries the same price, or even cheaper than, standard shipping costs.
To begin, the service will be available in four GGP malls, including Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco, Eastridge in San Jose, Glendale Galleria in Los Angeles, and Oakbrook Center in Chicago. The whole thing will hopefully be launched around the holidays, according to Deliv founder and CEO Daphne Carmeli.
While Deliv has GGP’s support, though, ultimately it will be up to the retailers to decide whether they want to participate or not. To get them on board, Deliv and GGP have been meeting with a number of retailers to convince them to offer same-day delivery and “out-Amazon Amazon.”
Deliv has raised $1 million in seed funding from investors that include General Catalyst, Redpoint Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Operators Fund, and PivotNorth.
via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_Ks8kajkV6c/
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