Delivering e-commerce packages the final mile to remote locations — the next breakthrough for firms like $AMZN
On a recent trip to Italy, while wandering through the streets of Venice — and I use the word “streets” loosely — I contemplated how difficult it would be to order a package on Amazon and have it shipped there. This is the kind of thing we do at Tematica — we count shopping bags in malls. We count the brands of sneakers kids are wearing around Rome (answer: lots and lots of Nike and Adidas with some Puma thrown in there. Under Armour was totally absent.) We walk down the streets of New York City and see how many people are drinking a soda, versus water, coffee or some other type of “energy” drink.
Now Venice, in the grand scheme of things, is a relatively easy location to ship a package to. Not as easy as a typical suburban neighborhood in the United States, but when compared to the developing countries of the world, pretty simple.
When we look at the Rise & Fall of the Middle Class thematic, we look primarily for those companies that are able to fulfill the needs for goods and services in the developing world. This article in the Wall Street Journal points to not just the logistics of getting a package to the remote parts of the world, but ultimately in a land where no addresses exist, getting it into the hands of the person that ordered it. Figuring this piece of the puzzle out will be an enormous breakthrough for both the e-tailers of the world such as Amazon (AMZN) and Alibaba (BABA), but also the delivery companies — FedEx (FDX), United Parcel Service (UPS) and DHL.
And as we discuss often, when we see two or more converging thematics — Rise & Fall of the Middle Class and the Connected Society in this case — we get excited!
A handful of startups are trying to solve one of the more vexing problems in e-commerce: how to deliver a package to a home or office that doesn’t have an address.That is a constant challenge for online retailers and delivery companies in many of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets, including India, and parts of the Middle East and Africa.Rather than having a conventional street address, an office in one these regions might give its location as “200 meters south of the Pizza Hut.” A home might have no identifier beyond a street name, or even just a part of town.
Source: Startups Try to Put Remote E-Commerce Customers on the Map – WSJ
