Dive Brief:
- DHL eCommerce on Tuesday announced a partnership with Easyship, an e-commerce software platform to enable same-day delivery for small shippers in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.
- As of Monday, e-commerce merchants in any of the three cities could use the Easyship platform to directly offer their customers the quick-shipping options via the DHL Parcel Metro service.
- "It's not only about speed; it's also about bringing quality and accessibility," Jorge Lopera, Senior Director of Delivery Concepts at DHL eCommerce Americas, said in a statement. Same-day or next-day delivery are typically "cost-prohibitive for small- and medium-sized online merchants," according to the press release.
Dive Insight:
Same-day and next-day delivery have been historically cost-prohibitive for small shippers for one reason: They lack the scale big retailers can take advantage of to lower fulfillment costs per order.
Target, Walmart and Amazon, for example, can place multiple packages going from one store in New York City on a single van or truck, maximizing their shipment-to-order ratio. The more packages in a single shipment, the less it costs to send each package along the final mile.
"Small businesses often lack access to the logistics resources, tools and solutions larger businesses have," a spokesperson for Easyship told Supply Chain Dive in an email. DHL's partnership with Easyship aims to neutralize this disadvantage, offering low-cost fast shipping to small vendors.
In comments to Supply Chain Dive, Lopera explained the company is betting a network of small vendors, all using DHL's network, can help bolster shipment-to-order ratios. It's about building density in the three cities, thereby improving all parties' cost positions on same- and next-day delivery services, he said in an email.
"DHL is not offering discounts — rather making an investment in developing a dense first mile network," Lopera said. He added the DHL Parcel Metro model is not a point-to-point logistics model, but rather consolidates pick-up and delivery of regional shipments.
"Increasing network utilization via local SME's reduces overall cost, which allows DHL to offer a low cost, high quality service," Lopera said.
