Uber has been making a huge impact on how people see transportation as a service, popularly calling itself an international transportation network company, and they have been experimenting with logistics as well. This popular cab-service is proposedly planning a partnership with big retailers and fashion brands to provide express delivery services on a wide variety of consumer products, essentially making Uber a significant player in the logistics business. Anonymous sources reveal that the service will be initially rolled out in New York City and will partner with quite a few luxury brands, mainly around Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Partnerships in San Francisco would be following soon after, with the announcements being most likely made in early October. The deliveries would be mostly by bike or car messengers, and there would be no immediate provision of ordering anything from the native Uber app as of now.
Uber is also said to be talking with sellers of e-commerce tools like Bigcommerce and Shopify, which help small businesses open up an online storefront, to expand its service to merchant customers, which would effectively help them provide the service to various brick and mortar stores. This also eliminates the need of separately integrating each and every store with the service, and using a consolidated system to process deliveries. This idea is inspired from how Uber allows other third-party companies to integrate Uber’s ride-hailing service into their apps. Notably, they are launching a same-day delivery service, effectively connecting people to a lot of brick and mortar stores, without ever visiting them. Uber has been bold about the expansion plans to their ride-hailing service, from delivering lunch to logistics, but they are going to face some serious competition in these areas as rival companies like Postmates and Deliv have been providing and perfecting this service for a long time. The service suffered a significant blow when Apple declined Uber’s bid to deliver its merchandise, opting for Postmates instead, making it clear that the competition is high.
This service will only work in the right Zip codes, and as some retailers may choose to pass the delivery fee to shoppers, other major retailers would choose to cover the cost for high value purchases. This launch is a part of the massive expansion plans of Uber’s new business unit, known internally as UberEverything, along with the launch of UberEats and UberRush. These non-core initiatives are slowly but surely taking shape, as Uber, as a company, continues to grow.