An Irish startup wants to level the playing field between small retailers and giants like Amazon

A NEW DUBLIN-BASED company wants to beat Amazon to the punch and bring seamless same-day delivery to Irish online retailers.

Amazon Prime, a subscription service that offers consumers the chance to avail of guaranteed fast shipping of their purchased goods, has only launched in select areas of the UK and the US and is still not available in Ireland.

However WeBringg, which was founded in December and is launching this July, plans to get ahead of the curve and give retailers in the Republic the chance to offer crowd-sourced same-day delivery before the American behemoth eyes up these shores.

Its service will cost just under €7 per deliver with goods to be delivered in 24 hours to anywhere within a set radius from the retailer. In some cases, the company is promising delivery within 60 minutes.

Same-day delivery has been a key selling point that e-commerce giants like Amazon have used to tighten their grips on the online retail market, but WeBringg co-founder and chief executive Sean Murray said its services can help level the playing field.

“Our system can easily integrate into any e-commerce website and the customer-experience aspect is something that differentiates us from regular courier companies,” he said.

“When you get something delivered through a courier, you might know that it will be delivered that day, but you might not know when.

“Using our service you can actually track the package live from the retailers store direct to your door and you know exactly to the minute when it will arrive.”

He added that the company already has nationwide pharmacy, grocery and off-licence chains on board and aims to have 50 retailers using the service by the end of the year.

WeBringg co-founders Alan Hickey and Sean Murray

Fleet of drivers

To turn a buck, the company takes a commission from the delivery fee, but the majority of the amount still goes to the driver.

Murray said WeBringg needs to hit a threshold of delivery drivers in the coming weeks so it can confidently assure retailers it will have a fleet of people on hand to deliver packages and keep up with demand.

He said the company expects to have 200 drivers on the books by next month and has bolstered its ranks by appealing to taxi drivers.

“We are recruiting via online adverts and also actively recruiting taxi drivers. They are already on the road and are very familiar with their localities. So we’re advertising in a taxi-industry magazine and also literally stomping down taxi ranks with leaflets and hiring taxi men.

“We currently have about 100 drivers on the system and we need to recruit another 100 within the next month, but in terms of capacity we have a core team of drivers who basically will cover set hours and set geographical areas so we can be confident that we have constant coverage.

“If we reach that number of drivers, we can be confident we will have about 20 drivers on the road at any given time and keep up constant service.”

Customers receive a URL to track their delivery driver in real time

Murray said he and fellow co-founder Alan Hickey plan to replicate the model in other Irish cities once the Dublin trial is finished. The company has received funding from an angel investor, although Murray wouldn’t reveal the investor’s identity.

“Dublin is first and we want to do three to six months minimum to make sure that the service is running like a well-oiled machine.

“Then the plan is to go to Cork, Galway, Limerick and Belfast next, with the aim of going to the UK market in 2017.”