Gently hopes to become a disrupter of urban fulfillment and major retailers with multi-billion-dollar networks, offering a same-day, nano fulfillment model using small nodes located around a city, tapping a predictive analytics engine to stock and position inventory in anticipation of demand.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy detailed how his team is working to implement an extreme makeover of the U.S. Post Service’s distribution and delivery network, in an effort to “unwind” past mistakes that created inefficiencies and hobbled its ability to execute on its mission.
Retailers and CPG companies have had a symbiotic relationship for decades, teaming up to offer customers more choice in convenient in-person and ecommerce storefronts. As both take on each other’s challenges, they must learn from the other’s processes and best practices to sustain new revenue streams in the long term based on evolving consumer behaviors, preferences and spending habits.Â
Drone provider Zipline is adding three new clients including health and wellness retailer GNC, pharmaceutical logistics firm Associated Couriers and Seattle-based eatery Pagliacci Pizza, expanding its footprint and building on its success delivering vaccines in Africa and working with retail giant Walmart. GNC will start out with deliveries in Salt Lake City, where it has been testing the Zipline service.
Wix, a platform for merchants to create ecommerce storefronts, has partnered with shipping services provider Shippo to add a set of natively integrated tools its customers can use to simplify order delivery and take advantage of volume discounts with carriers. Wix Shipping went live in November in Canada and has now launched in the U.S. and the UK, with plans to expand shortly to Germany.
It’s difficult to fully approximate the time a package will take to arrive when shipping is subject to a multitude of factors outside our control. These variables can include extreme weather, driver shortages, holidays and even customs discrepancies. What if you could know beforehand based on previous patterns, and implement this into the shipping estimate given to the customer? Read on to find out how.
The U.S. Postal Service reported a net loss that ballooned by $1.8 billion and a 5% decline in parcel volume for the second quarter, as the USPS faces the same ecommerce declines as other major carriers while wrestling with pain from a major network overhaul, union unrest and battles over its up-and-down EV adoption. Parcel revenue was down 2% to $7.6 billion, but first-class mail inched up to $6.3 billion.
Pitney Bowes shareholders voted to add four new directors from a slate of five proposed by activist firm Hestia Capital Management to join the nine-member board, backing a group of investors looking for wholesale changes to reverse the fortunes of the postal consolidation and cross-border ecommerce firm. Both sides pledged to work together for the betterment of the company. The market boosted the stock.
Pitney Bowes reported a 10% drop in Q1 revenue and a net loss of $8 million vs. income of $21 million in 2022, and announced unspecified staff cuts in its global ecommerce and domestic parcel units, as it looks at a contentious shareholder meeting with major investors eager for wholesale changes. The opposition group has put forward turnaround specialist Lance Rosenzweig as an interim CEO candidate.
Shopify has pulled the plug on its ambitious in-house logistics business built up in recent years, selling Deliverr to global supply chain provider Flexport and warehouse robotics firm 6 River Systems to UK-based fulfillment automation firm Ocado. “We are changing the shape of Shopify significantly today to pay unshared attention to our mission,” said Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke in a letter to employees.