An Aussie start-up that claims to offer rates 70 per cent cheaper than Australia Post has revealed a new plan to make the post office obsolete.
Parcel delivery firm Sendle is teaming up with fellow Aussie start-up Hubbed to offer a 24/7 drop-off and collection network covering hundreds of BP service stations, newsagents and pharmacies.
Sendle, which claims to offer domestic rates up to 70 per cent cheaper than Australia Post, last year won a David and Goliath trademark battle against the service over its “Post without the Office” tagline.
It says the new partnership, coming after an international delivery arrangement with DHL allowing small businesses to ship to more than 220 countries, continues to chip away at the Australia Post monopoly.
“Why go to the post office when you can go to a BP, which has good parking and is open 24/7 in a location you’re familiar with?” Sendle chief executive and co-founder James Chin-Moody said.
“BPs and pharmacies and newsagents, if you think about it, they’re all about convenience. Their purpose is not to have people lining up, you’re not going to have someone in front of you trying to get their passport renewed.”
Mr Chin-Moody said the partnership with Hubbed was about offering another option on top of door-to-door delivery for the “tens of thousands” of small businesses Sendle worked with every day.
Sendle’s customers range from “mumpreneurs” and young professionals with a “side hustle” selling things online to full-time e-commerce operators.
“It might be someone who’s busy and can’t wait at home (for the courier); they might want to drop it off after taking the kids to school,” he said.
While declining to reveal revenue, Mr Chin-Moody said Sendle had “more than doubled in size” since the DHL announcement and had been “growing at way more than 15 per cent per month for the last 36 months”.
He said Sendle had now sent “three light hours of parcels”, equivalent to “11 times to the sun and back”, and was facilitating more than $250 million worth of small business e-commerce annually.
Mr Chin-Moody said it was “hard to say” what Sendle’s market share was because small business figures were not published.
“We do know it basically is dominated completely by Australia Post, that’s one of the reasons it’s so expensive,” he said.
“We want to make it easier, save small businesses time and money. It’s all about levelling the playing field. The pricing for Sendle is the same whether you’re sending from Sydney or Armidale.”
Hubbed founder and CEO David McLean said the partnership could help small businesses reduce their logistics costs.
“We’re excited about partnering with Sendle to offer Australian businesses another way to deliver their parcels,” he said.
Earlier this year, a damning report released by Commonwealth Ombudsman Michael Manthorpe found while there were 1.1 million complaints to Australia Post last year, the actual number was likely far higher.
The report found Australia Post was overly “defensive” in its responses to complaints about issues like “carding” — leaving delivery cards without knocking — and compensation for loss or damage, and that it if “put more effort into rapidly resolving, rather than resisting complaints, it would deliver better outcomes”.
Earlier this month Australia Post announced it was hiring nearly 3000 new workers as it braces for its “biggest Christmas ever”, with Aussies tipped to spend $21 billion in online purchases for the first time.
Extracted from News.com.au