Last Mile Delivery for Carousell Users (Park N Parcel)

In my previous post on "Convenience and Flexibility for collecting your Parcel: Park N Parcel", I shared how Park N Parcel is enabling online shoppers to enjoy the convenience of collection from people's home. This means instead of having to go down to the post office for missed delivery, you can have the item delivered to "Parker" who collect the items on behalf of you and you can go down to their place to collect it.

Fast forward to today, they have moved from people's home to retail shops and FnB outlets to be part of their "Parker" network. Initially, I was thinking why would retail shops or FnB outlets want to help collect the parcels until I recalled about my previous post "No ATM, No Problem: SoCash" and finally saw the rationale behind it. Below is a scenario on why being a "Parker" can benefit the retail shops or FnB outlets.  

Let's pretend that you are the shop owner of "Gong Cha" or "LiHo" which is now the new name. You have collected the parcel from the deliveryman and the user is coming to collect the parcel from you. When the user arrives at your shop to collect the parcel, you could suggest to the user to try out the latest Cheese Tea and get sales for your drinks. Even if you do not try to sell your drink to the user, he/she may be thirsty at that moment and make a purchase for your drinks.

Hence for shops, not only can they make money by being a "Parker", they also benefit from the increase in footfall or traffic generated from Shoppers who come by to collect their parcel. Talk about a win-win situation for both the Shoppers and Parkers.

While thinking through Park N Parcel concept, I recalled a facebook post that I wrote about Carousell last year and how they should be in the last mile delivery as part of their business which I have screenshot it below for reference. Actually, Park N Parcel seems like a great fit for this gap. Currently the method which buyers collect their items from sellers are either via meet up or delivery. This existing method is definitely possible if sellers are doing low volume and buyers are always available to collect the items from the deliveryman.  If Park N Parcel were to come in, they can help buyers to have the option to collect the items from homes, retail shops or fnb outlets which solve the issue of missed delivery. And for sellers, it can be a cheaper option of "delivery" and also save them time to do meet up since they can leave the item at the "Parker" and buyers can collect it at the timing of their convenience. I am not sure about you but I have seen numerous times people who wait outside the MRT station with a huge box of parcels inside and are probably waiting for their buyers to come collect. If Park N Parcel can come in to fill this gap, then it will be time saved and increase of convenience.

Below is a flowchart of how Park N Parcel can build this feature in existence to their current model.

Based on their above model, do you think sellers and buyers would be keen to use it? I personally think this would help to solve the problem of meet up whereby it is difficult for people to set the perfect timing for meet up even though both may be at the same location. Another aspect that this model help to solve are people who "fly aeroplane" or disappear after agreeing to deal. Only after the buyer received the collection link then do they go ahead to make the trip down to the Parker.

It will definitely be interesting to see this happen between Carousell and Park N Parcel for logistics. Currently payment is being done via DBS Paylah on Carousell whereby users can click on the paylah link provided by the seller to make payment easily. Hopefully with both payment and logistics in place, we could see increase of activity on Carousell, DBS paylah, Park N Parcel as well as Retail Shops and FnB outlets.

Would you be keen to use such features from Park N Parcel? Go ahead to comment about it and don't forget to subscribe via email or like our Facebook page for the latest updates!