DPD allies with German clothing retailer to add 1,300 parcel shops
DPD Germany has taken a big step in the expansion of its parcel shop network, through a partnership with one of the country’s largest clothing retailers. The move has added DPD ParcelShops to more than 1,300 branches run by NKD across Germany.
DPD said the partnership was one of its most important for the network of parcel collection points.
The parcel carrier now has 6,000 ParcelShop locations in Germany including the NKD locations, and 16,000 within Europe as a whole. Plans are to expand the European network to 22,000 locations in 13 countries by the end of this year.
In Germany consumers will be able to have e-commerce purchases delivered to their local DPD ParcelShop within an NKD store, and also use it as a drop-off point for product returns — an “increasingly important” option, DPD said, because of the boom in e-commerce.
Customers will also be able to drop off parcels at the NKD stores where shipping has been paid for through the online shipping platform dpdwebpaket.de.
“Our strategic partnership with NKD makes parcel shipping even more accessible for consumers”, explains Peter Weilke, Group Manager Parcel Shop at DPD in Germany. “NKD has an excellent branch network which is characterised by accessible locations, favourable business hours and high quality standards. This makes NKD an ideal partner for the DPD ParcelShops.”
Convenience
DPD, part of DPDgroup, which is owned by the French postal service La Poste, is currently in the process of pushing for a target to double its market share in the German parcel market to about 15% by 2020 — no easy task in the highly competitive German parcel market against rivals including Hermes, GLS, UPS and Deutsche Post DHL, all of whom have large parcel shop networks in Germany.
A key strategy for the company is to make parcel shipping more convenient for consumers.
NKD has more than 2,000 stores in seven European countries, turning over about EUR 600m a year, EUR 400m in Germany alone.
The company said the partnership with DPD will mean providing its in-store customers with an additional service.
Christian Welles, NKD sales director at NKD, adds: “The integration of DPD ParcelShops will enable us to provide our customers with a very useful additional service. In addition we expect that it will increase customer numbers and frequency.”
