Buzzing with new ideas
PiggyBee Founder and CEO David Vuylsteke told World Mail and Express Europe delegates that the crowdshipping specialist now has close to 5,000 members. The company’s modus operandi is to match up people who want to have items carried between two locations, with travellers who are making that journey anyway.
It is bit like Nimber or Roadie – but many of the travelers are using commercial airline flights for international journeys, rather than making road trips in their own cars.
To give an idea of the kind of deliveries made through PiggyBees, some of the latest requests include taking food items from Italy to Jacksonville, Florida; and transporting earings from Austin, Texas to Dhaka in Bangladesh.
PiggyBee’s international trips tend to capture most media attention, but the company says the deliveries it can mediate can be “(almost) anything from (or to) anywhere across any distance (International, domestic or local)”.
At the moment, PiggyBee is a free service. The company itself makes no charge. According to the website: “Various revenue models are considered but our # 1 priority is to grow our community to ensure a maximum of deliveries.”
With regarded to rewarding the traveler, PiggyBee has this message for delivery requesters: “To thank the traveler for delivery, add a tip and/or a reward that you could offer in return (such as a pick-up from the airport or train station, an invitation for a drink, a sightseeing tour, …or whatever you may want to offer.)”
The afternoon sessions at the World Mail and Express Europe conference also included further discussion on how the national posts and their competitors are adapting to market disruption, with contributions from: Nick Wells, CEO of Whistl; Thomas Baldry, Senior Vice President Global Mail Operations with Deutsche Post DHL; Pablo Raventos Saez, Managing Director of Unipost; and Walter Hitziger, Member of the Management Board at Osterreichische Post.
The programme also looked at trends and opportunities in cross-border e-commerce and online marketplaces with contributions from Thierry Dieu, Head of Communications with IPC; and One World Express Managing Director, Atul Bhakta.
