Local high street stores will need to be front and centre of the convenience revolution as Amazon’s drone delivery service is derailed.

Local high street stores will need to be front and centre of the delivery revolution as Amazon’s drone delivery service is derailed.

The idea of answering your door to a drone, signing your name on a tablet, and taking possession of the shiny new purchase you ordered online earlier that day may have to be filed under ‘Tomorrow’s World’ for the time being, after draft regulations published by the US Federal Aviation Authority ruled out Amazon’s ambitious plans to use the gadgets to service local orders.

But Amazon’s proposal showed that the convenience of delivery options is becoming just as much of a priority for retailers as speed.

“It is no great stretch to imagine retailers soon being able to use real-time information to divert deliveries on-the-fly”

Tobias Hartmann, eBay Enterprise

The implementation of options such as click-and-collect – that John Lewis reported had outstripped home delivery for the first time over the festive season – is fundamentally changing retailers’ fulfilment operations, and will provide a platform for even more ambitious services in the future.

While the drone dream has been brought back down to Earth with a bump, it is no great stretch to imagine retailers soon being able to use real-time information about a customer’s location, the time of dispatch, and the delivery time, to divert deliveries on-the-fly.

This could mean re-routing deliveries to one of a number of pre-determined locations – the customer’s home or office, the station they commute from, or one of the retailer’s local stores or depots – to ensure they reach the customer at their convenience.

Shift in fulfilment

Developments on this scale will, however, depend on retailers fundamentally changing their fulfilment infrastructure, moving from having one centrally-located hub from which all orders are dispatched to using a network of smaller local distribution centres.

Ship-from-store already enables retailers to reduce delivery times and streamline inventory management by using in-store stock to fulfill online orders for local delivery.

“Ship-from-store could provide a shot in the arm”

Tobias Hartmann, eBay Enterprise

And with the debate about the convergence of on- and offline retail and the future of the high street rumbling on, ship-from-store could provide a shot in the arm as online pure-plays investigate the possibility of buying up units that may otherwise have to be vacated.

Ultra-convenient delivery options that place the physical store at the centre of local fulfilment networks will rely on retailers building partnerships with specialist couriers that can provide the agility needed to carry out high volumes of local deliveries to customers that are “moving targets”.

The likes of CitySprint and Shutl already offer guaranteed 60 or 90 minute delivery services in urban areas.

These could be augmented by more disruptive services; MyTaxi has already diversified into delivery, as Addison Lee had done before. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer “hitch-hiking for packages” services, such as Kanga and Roadie in the US, which see private individuals deliver goods to one another, are beginning to take off.

Services such as click-and-collect and ship-from-store may seem a long way from delivery drones, but it is clear that options such as these lay the groundwork for greater innovation and create a brighter future for the high street than the doom-mongers would have you believe.

  • Tobias Hartmann is vice-president of client success, operations and international at eBay Enterprise