Introduction

What’s the Story? The Coresight Research team will attend and participate in this year’s Shoptalk conference, which will be held on March 27–30, 2022, in Las Vegas, US. Shoptalk 2022 will address the sudden transformation in the retail environment since the outbreak of Covid-19, as the industry is looking to embrace technology and innovation to address new challenges. On March 27, 2022, Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, will emcee and feature on the judging panel of Shoptalk 2022’s “Shark Reef” startup pitch competition, which will see 15 early-stage US retail-technology innovators compete to win the Shark’s Choice and Audience Choice awards. In the lead-up to the event, we are profiling the participating innovators. This report forms part of our Innovator Profile series, which focuses on emerging technologies that are disrupting traditional retail and fueling innovation across the retail value chain. We present Via.Delivery, a retail-technology platform for online order delivery and pickup through retail chains. Coresight Research collaborated with Via.Delivery to offer insights into its service capabilities and offerings. Why It Matters Coresight Research categorizes the 15 participating innovators into four areas of disruption in retail. Via.Delivery falls under “forward-looking physical experiences.” Brands and retailers across multiple sectors are looking to reimagine the brick-and-mortar retail experience to remain competitive in an increasingly digital world. Forward-looking concepts cover order delivery and pickup enhancements, retail space optimization and store traffic analytics. Technology innovators focusing on forward-looking physical experiences can assist retailers in creating a more engaging and convenient store-based shopping journey for their customers.

Via.Delivery: In Detail

    Headquarters Menlo Park, California, US Funding Stage Seed stage Total funding: $2.9 million Company Description Founded in 2020, Via.Delivery is a retail-technology company that utilizes digital logistics, physical warehouses and a cloud-based delivery platform to create a sustainable delivery network for DTC (direct-to-consumer) brands and online retailers. The company integrates e-commerce parcels into existing brick-and-mortar supply chain infrastructure through partnerships with local grocery stores, pharmacies, copy centers and more, to provide over 97,000 pickup locations. The company describes its model as “buy online, pick up anywhere” (BOPA); its e-commerce order-fulfillment network of commercial pickups makes use of commonly visited brick-and-mortar locations that are local to its users. Via.Delivery aims to make e-commerce delivery, with an emphasis on the last mile, easier for consumers, cheaper for retailers and more environmentally sustainable. It offers an additional benefit of driving traffic to its partners’ physical storefronts. [caption id="attachment_143261" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Source: Via.Delivery [/caption]   What Problem Is the Company Solving? Consumers have interacted with multiple shopping channels amid the pandemic, with omnichannel retail emerging as a strong trend. While many big retailers, including Target and Walmart, were able to pivot quickly and utilize their vast digital and physical infrastructure to capitalize on this trend, small online retailers and DTC brands were left out due to a lack of physical infrastructure. Consumer shopping patterns have also shifted toward expecting faster and more convenient delivery. However, last-mile delivery is often one of the costliest stages of the fulfillment process and causes a lot of damage to the environment through carbon emissions. By using pre-existing logistics infrastructure and partnering with local brick-and-mortar locations, last-mile delivery becomes cheaper for retailers, with more efficient delivery routes that also deliveries more sustainable by reducing carbon emissions. Additionally, consumers can select the most convenient collection locations for their schedules. Market Opportunity  We estimate that total US online retail sales reached $806 billion in 2021 and will reach almost $1.2 trillion in 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 10%. As the e-commerce market grows, so will the logistics industry, which tracks different parts of the process including supply chain and delivery optimization among others to make the e-commerce process more efficient. The global e-commerce logistics market reached $485 billion in 2021 and is set to reach about $758 billion by 2025, according to Statista. As shoppers consume more products online, many will look for alternative and more sustainable methods of delivery. Omnichannel methods, such as BOPA, are growing rapidly in popularity among both consumers and retailers. A Coresight Research survey on February 28, 2022, foundthat curbside pickup and collect in-store are popular choices among US consumers for online order fulfillment: 27% and 16% of respondents said they had used these options in the three months prior to the survey. Store-pickup options also reduce last-mile carbon emissions by bringing products closer to consumers’ homes, which reduces emissions compared to goods being shipped from distance warehouses—contributing to making the e-commerce delivery process more sustainable. What We Think As consumers demand quicker and alternative methods of receiving their online purchases, retailers must look to innovation for creative and sustainable ways of delivering their products and meeting consumer expectations. We believe that retailers that can create sustainable omnichannel delivery methods will gain an edge in the market.