In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by David McLean, Founder and CEO of Hubbed, a technology solution giving eCommerce businesses and their customers an alternative way to receive products. With Hubbed, customers can opt to pick up their package from their local corner shop, newsagent or petrol station at a time that suits them. Hubbed partners with all the major couriers, has around 2200 pick up locations Australia-wide and will turn on four further markets in South East Asia later this year. In this chat, David shares the benefits this solution can bring for retailers who become ‘hubs’, the sustainability impact Hubbed is making and why he’s asking for a punch in the face from me! Plus, I throw my two cents in on the future of Hubbed’s pick up locations…i’ll give you a clue, it involves a cold one!
“We think it’s important, especially for high value items, that you make sure your customer knows there’s a secure click and pick solution“
David McLean
Convenient price point
“I have this ongoing piece of banter with people who say to me, “Oh it’s expensive $2 a parcel.” And I say remember when we used to use money? And you’d walk past a CommBank ATM and it would charge $1.50 to take out 50 bucks? And you could walk 10 metres up the road to the St George’s, but you couldn’t be bothered? So let’s talk about at the end of the day, it’s a convenient prize point.
And if it’s convenient for you to have that…you place an order for a dress on a Thursday night because you wanna wear it on Saturday. And for some reason you’re just not sure if you’re gonna be home or you’re concerned that it might get delayed, but it could be delivered on Saturday morning to the BP, you’re not worried about it. It’s gonna cost you two bucks for that convenience… I don’t really think it’s a big ask.”
Pubs are the next hub! You heard it here first
(David) “If you look at parts of Europe, about 40% of all parcels are picked up outside of home and growing in some markets is upwards of 90%. And so we know the trajectory for out-of-home pick up is going to grow in Australia in line with everybody else. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a locker at the end of your street that you could literally pick your items up from? So we’re looking at various models around locker management. So we can put in places where the density maybe doesn’t support a xxx and a locker makes more sense. So that’s the sort of thing we’re looking at doing.
(Nathan) Can I put a suggestion in? Can you organize for pubs to collect parcels, because then I will collect all the parcels for our family. There we go. Dad’s been gone for 15 minutes. He is just picking up the parcels. He may have snuck in a cheeky beer as well while we’re there!
(David) I think that’s a great idea, as long as I’m allowed to tell everyone that it was my idea. Because I actually think that’s quite awesome. Seriously, Nathan, that has never occurred to me. I think that’s a really good one. No commissions. It was my idea.
(Nathan) That’s the benefit of coming on this show. We never know where we’ll go. I love it.
Sustainability
“If parcels are dropped into the hub network, it reduces carbon and carbon equivalent emissions by almost 50% on home delivery. Even though we already offer carbon offsets on our parcels anyway, we’re actually genuinely reducing emissions and congestion… and it just makes sense if you’ve a driver who can drop off 20 or 30 parcels rather than doing 20 or 30 individual deliveries, and those customers are not creating a new drive to collect those parcels, they’re doing it in an existing drive to work from work or a commute, then you are generally reducing emissions.
We know that retail are quite passionate about that, and in actual fact the carriers are starting to be quite passionate about that, but it also works for them because it’s driving efficiency and increasing capacity.
Questions answered in this episode include…
- How does HUBBED integrate into retail systems?
- What’s Hubbed’s next must-have pick up location?
- How prevalent is porch piracy?
Links from the episode:
- Hubbed
- Carbon Reduction Institute Case Study
- Toll
- Couriers Please
- Sendle
- DHL
- UPS
- FedEx
- The Iconic
- JB Hi Fi
- Myer
- Kmart
- Relievables
- National Storage
- Shopify Plus and Milligram (sponsored)
- Packleo (sponsored)
This episode was brought to you by…
