Dive Brief:
- Recently shuttered same-day delivery provider Point Pickup Technologies has found a buyer for its assets in parcel delivery startup Delivered.
- Delivered made the acquisition after a judge's approval in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court, Delivered CEO Andrew Hurst told Supply Chain Dive in an interview last week. The purchase price was $100,000, according to court filings.
- The deal does not include GrocerKey, a white-label e-commerce platform geared toward the grocery industry that Point Pickup acquired in 2021. A judge approved the sale of GrocerKey to Wynshop, an e-commerce technology provider, in April for $250,000.
Dive Insight:
Delivered currently offers end-to-end parcel delivery services using independent contractors and available air and ground capacity in the market. The timeline to roll out new services that lean on the acquisition is unclear, according to Hurst. Delivered still has to sift through Point Pickup's technology and determine what changes need to be made.
"There needs to be some efficiency built that wasn't in the infrastructure from day one," he said.
Hurst said Delivered is exploring several ways it could leverage Point Pickup's assets, which connected retail, grocery and convenience brands to a network of gig economy workers for same-day fulfillment and delivery services.
Potential uses include same-day services from the stores of Delivered customers and providing extra delivery capacity for carriers during high-demand periods like peak season. Delivered can also glean insights from the data Point Pickup has collected through the years, such as how long it takes to deliver on particular routes.
"What Point Pickup accelerates is the technology buildout for some of those services that we want to be able to offer our customers in the relatively near future," Hurst said.
Founded in 2015, Point Pickup provided delivery services across the U.S. for companies like Walmart, Kroger and The Home Depot. It secured $30 million in funding in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic generated interest in fast home delivery offerings.
But since then, increased competition and soft demand have pressured carriers, LPF Spend Management founder Nate Skiver said in a February LinkedIn post about Point Pickup.
Those conditions didn't help Point Pickup during the sale process. The company's assets had "limited market and value" despite being marketed extensively, according to a May filing proposing the sale to Delivered.
