Have you ever set up an Ebay seller account just to be set back at the inconvenience of shipping your items?
Packaging, various posting options, tracking, fees, commission - all these hurdles offer a huge barrier for consumers. Kevin Gibbon wants to solve this.
“I used to be an Ebay power seller, and the shipping was the biggest pain points of my business. That stuck with me for many, many years.”
Gibbon is CEO of Shyp, a logistics company that will collect, package, and deliver items within 20 minutes from your door, and for a competitive price, by working in collaboration with Fedex or UPS.
“When I decided to start Shyp, I tried to imagine a world where there was as little friction as possible,” Gibbon told the audience at WIRED Retail in London. “I tried to design the entire experience around that, without having any boundaries.”
In order to ship an item, you just need to take a photo of the object and Shyp will send an employee to your door to pick it up. You don't need to worry about paying for packaging, as this is included in the fee. Prices vary depending on the type of item, distance and weight, and you can get an estimate at Shyp's website. There are also discounts for multiple deliveries, for example.
By removing this barrier, eBay sellers are able to list more items and keep their margins lower, ultimately making more from the site.
At the WIRED Retail event, held at the British Museum, Gibbon also spoke of how he eschewed the Uber model of using self-employed workers - something that has been widely criticised. “We found there was another level of customer service we needed - so we employ our workers.”
After rolling out the app to consumers, Gibbon said he found it changed the way people related to e-commerce. And, after partnering with Ebay, the retailer was able to increase the amount of listings by reducing the struggle of the shipping process.
“There’s been a lot of innovation in payment, but shipping still is a struggle. We found that people listed more when they had easier shipping. I think that makes a lot of sense,” added Gibbon.
Shyp is currently only available in the US – in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York – but Gibbon would like to expand to the UK. “We’re thinking about the millennial audience. When you’re able to remove friction it’s amazing to see what can actually happen.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
