The alliances were unveiled this week as the Seattle-based company started its very first deliveries in association with its logistics partner Blue Package, Inc.

EquaShip, which launched its cut-price delivery services last month, is now directly integrated into the Vendio and ShipWorks software platforms for small and medium-sized Internet retailers.

It adds the company’s services as the “fourth carrier” for e-commerce merchants in the continental United States, alongside the US Postal Service, FedEx and UPS, promising prices up to 77% lower than FedEx or UPS domestically, along with $100 of “real” insurance with every shipment.

International services are due to launch in January, offering rates up to 80% less than rivals.

Ron Wiener, founder and CEO of EquaShip, told Post&Parcel yesterday that after vetting his first customers, the service had now started generating revenue as of this week.

He said the partnerships with Vendios and ShipWorks would be important to make EquaShip services available to many more ecommerce merchants.

Platforms

Vendio is a US firm bought by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba last year, which has close links to US-based ecommerce auction giant eBay. Its platform provides free online stores for online merchants to sell through marketplaces including eBay and Amazon. Last year it was reported that at lease 80,000 small businesses in the US use the platform for their online selling.

ShipWorks is a US shipping software platform that provides an online shopping cart system linked through to shipping services, integrating with 30 major e-commerce platforms, including Amazon Seller Central, eBay, Magento, PayPal and Yahoo! Stores to manage shipping.

“Each of them brings in an important set of e-commerce merchants,” he explained. “Vendio brings access to a lot of merchants in the eBay and Amazon marketplaces. A lot of e-commerce merchants are now seeing the need to be in multiple marketplaces, and as one of the biggest electronic storefront platforms, Vendio syncs all their inventory and sales within one platform.

“ShipWorks is big in its own way – 30 other platforms use the ShipWorks platform, because a lot of those ecommerce platforms do not have shipping themselves,” he explained.

EquaShip uses the US Postal Service for the final mile of deliveries to American homes, as do FedEx and UPS for a significant portion of their e-commerce shipments. Its one-size-fits-all pricing policy does not allow discounts for large shipment volumes, believing that doing so would mean smaller merchants subsidising shipping of their larger competitors.

Vendio CEO Mike Effle said integrating with the new shipping service meant thousands of his customers would be able to compete on a level playing-field with larger retailers.

“Integrating EquaShip enables Vendio to help these merchants save money and time on shipping, while meeting their customers’ demands for discounted or even the ‘free’ shipping customers love,” said Effle.

Wes Clayton, president of ShipWorks provider Interapptive, said: “Online merchants can now use ShipWorks to process their EquaShip labels directly from within our software, without the need to copy and paste or re-key address information.”

International

Wiener told Post&Parcel that the big growth areas in US e-commerce shipping at the moment are in international shipments and product returns, both of which EquaShip has its eye on, with international services due to launch in the New Year.

The international service will initially be available for packages up to four pounds in weight, but EquaShip is also developing options for larger items.

“There’s a lot of interest in our international offering already,” he said. “Either companies have done international shipping before and backed off because of the complexity involved, or never got into it in the first place. It’s a complex area, particularly around customs and duty, and so we are seeing a lot of interest in what we are offering.”

Source: James Cartledge, Post&Parcel

Tags: B2C parcels, c2c, ecommerce, Equaship, USA