By John Jeffay, NoCamels -
Big companies rely on big courier services like FedEx, DHL or UPS to deliver millions of parcels every day.
But if you’re running a small business, or you simply need to send an urgent letter, document or birthday present, the corporate couriers just aren’t interested.
So says Amir Demri, CEO of Israeli startup Shipper Global, which launched just over a month ago.
It’s like turning up unannounced at a baked bean factory and asking to buy a single can. The big couriers are geared up for big clients who sign up for an account and send 100 or more parcels a month.
But small-time customers are more trouble than they’re worth. That’s the gap in the market that Demri aims to fill.
He’s set up as a middleman between the couriers and the low-volume customers. He removes the pain points for the couriers – dealing with a pile of paperwork for one small delivery – and provides the customer with a super-simple way of getting a quote and placing an order for door-to-door pickup and delivery.
Customers enter the size and weight of their parcel, where they’re located and where it’s going, and get instant prices.
Shipper Global offers a lowest price ($25.90 for example for a parcel from Tel Aviv to New York), a fastest price ($70.90) and an optimal price ($52.90).
It shows you which courier it’ll use – FedEX, UPS and DHL respectively in this case.
And if you’re thinking, as I did, that it can’t be that hard to go direct to one of these couriers, then you’re welcome to try.
I spent 15 minutes battling with the FedEx website, trying to get past an error message that reads “Enter a customs value of at least 1 to determine the transit time for this shipment. It is required,” even though it hadn’t asked me any questions about customs. Websites for other big couriers are no easier.
Demri plans to disrupt the status quo by streamlining the process up to the point when the messenger collects your parcel.
He owns a freight forwarding company and a customer brokerage company in Israel and in the United States and understands the market.
He was working in New York’s Garment District and saw people constantly taking boxes of samples to send to Asia.
He asked why they didn’t have a courier come and collect, and they told him it was too complicated. They were a small business and the couriers either wouldn’t deal with them at all, or would massively over-charge them.
“Right now this industry is very conservative, very old, and is mainly controlled by logistics companies,” says Demri.
“It doesn’t make sense to me that you can order flights, hotels, even milk on the internet, but shipping still belongs to the logistics companies and they keep it very, very, closed.
“Our idea is to give everybody full access on demand to send small packages, from everywhere to everywhere, just like you order a taxi or order a pizza.
“The big courier services like DHL, FedEx and UPS, deal directly with big accounts. They don’t deal with private individuals, or if they do, the price is three times higher.
“And the process to open an account with the courier service is very, very complicated and takes a very, very long time.
“Using our website takes three clicks to get a price and another 10 clicks to place an order. If you go to the big carriers you need to fill in at least 100 fields to get a price, and then another 50 to make the order.
“We try to simplify the process as much as we can, in order that people will use it on daily basis.”
He says they currently have a pilot shipping lower-value jewelry for the Israel Diamond Exchange, in Ramat Gan, and see huge potential among small e-commerce businesses.
Nobody else is doing this on a global scale he says, although there are companies in the UK and elsewhere offering a similar service domestically.
So how have the big couriers reacted? They’re happy, says Demri. Ultimately, they still get the business, because they’re being paid to move the parcels. But they don’t have the hassle of dealing with small customers.
“My aim in two years is to be like Skyscanner is for flights,” he says. “My goal is to move more than 50,000 parcels every month and to have at least 60 to 80 courier partners worldwide.”
