What is a point of convenience
A point of convenience is a place close to your home, your work or a place where you usually pass by: school, gym, church, club,... that is used to pick up packages and/or return them. These spaces can also take advantage of foot traffic to sell products, collect data or send information to the user, and this provides them with additional revenue.
The city is asking for it
Hay que reducir o al menos dejar de aumentar el tráfico en las ciudades porque el eCommerce que ya llevaba 10 años creciendo al 20% este año se va a disparar y no podemos permitirnos el lujo de hacer un recorrido completo hasta la puerta de casa para entregar un producto pequeño. Urge agrupar pedidos y son ya muchas las ciudades del norte de Europa que no permiten entregar pedidos de uno en uno sino que le exigen al logístico agruparlos, por ejemplo llevándolos a un punto de conveniencia en lugar de a una casa.
The market is asking for it
More and more products are being sold in eCommerce, some with low price or margin or high weight, where the convenience point reduces the logistics cost; and others that need special conditions, for example refrigerated food given the explosion that is having food eCommerce. The cold chain is better and cheaper if we use a physical point, and the delivery of recurring, heavy, low-priced, low-margin products such as milk or water becomes much cheaper.
Closed commercial premises awaiting a new use
There are more empty stores than ever. The coronavirus has wiped out thousands of small businesses in the cities, it is enough to take a walk through our neighborhoods to see empty storefronts everywhere with lower rents than before.
Standard, interoperable and cross-sellable are the keys
These spaces need to be homogeneous for example in schedules, shelf sizes or refrigerators to provide a complete service to the customer, they must also operate with several logistics companies that in turn provide services to numerous eCommerce, and that encourage finding your point of convenience before asking them to take it home in the sales process. And above all they must have a viable business model because pure logistics is unlikely to make them sustainable but they can have additional revenue by leveraging foot traffic.
