Online shoppers may very shortly have a new option to get their ordered items delivered to their homes on the very same day. If reports are to be believed, Uber is all set to launch a goods delivery service through an all-new app that would enable both UberRush bike couriers and regular Uber drivers to take orders and deliver goods. The company has already dipped its feet in the delivery services sector with their food delivery service UberEats, which is already up and running in LA and Barcelona. It is also about to be launched later this week in New York and Chicago. Then there’s UberFresh, which delivers fresh produce on demand. Uber had also experimented with UberEssentials, a household goods delivery service, but that experiment didn’t last long. Uber will be hoping that their latest venture doesn’t meet the same fate. If these recent reports hold any water at all, looks like the Uber management is happy with the UberEats results and wants to expand that fledgling success to other areas of the delivery services sector.
Uber will team up with mobile shopping app Spring for this endeavor, and are offering “Spring + UberRush” as a time limited offer for a handful of brands to start with. The report quotes anonymous sources to say that there are over 400 merchants across the US who’ve expressed interest in signing up, including Neiman Marcus, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany’s and Hugo Boss. However, Uber is apparently also taking great pains to keep this new project separate from UberRush – at least, for now. They’ve apparently written a whole new app for this project and Uber drivers are being instructed to use new phones to receive orders instead of the phone they’re using for the Uber or the UberRush app. Eventually though, Uber plans to combine the apps, enabling the drivers to effortlessly multi-task, delivering packages and carrying passengers at the same time. According to the report, Uber had originally planned to deliver goods from online retailers like Amazon and eBay, but had a change of heart somewhere down the line and would now only look to work with high-end brands that will have a better grip on locally available inventory.
Uber hasn’t always had a smooth ride, what with litigation and agitations seemingly never far away, but that hasn’t stopped them from being ambitious in their forays into newer frontiers. It remains to be seen how successful they will be in their latest undertaking, but it is fair to say that they have enough resources – both financial and physical – to be competitive in the long run.