Spain’s on-demand shipment app, Glovo, is getting ready to be able to provide a much wider variety of items within a 30-minute timespan by presenting a B2B logistics play– making use of a network of city center warehouses that it plans to massively expand over the next 12 months.
It’s just revealed the launch of a brand-new organization unit, called Q-Commerce– the “Q” standing for fast– to speed up the advancement of a B2B service that will see it use to equip 3rd parties’ products in its storage facilities and have the couriers that run on its on-demand platform make shipments for other services too– offering what it costs as a “turn-key” logistics option for services of all sizes to underpin their own online stories.
It is currently dealing with retail brand names like Unilever, Nestle, and L’Or éal and grocery stores consisting of Walmart, Carrefour, and Kaufland to equip and offer their items from its network of so-called “dark stores”– which are currently found in Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, and Milan– providing users their fast shipment for selected groceries and other items under its “Glovo Market” brand name (presently with the carrot of free 24-hour shipment and no minimum invest). However, it’s aiming to increase throughout the board– expanding the reach of its Glovo Market deal to more cities and introducing a B2B offer to power others’ online shops– saying it plans to have more than 100 dark stores up and running by the end of 2021.
Commenting in a declaration, Daniel Alonso, worldwide director of Q-Commerce at Glovo– and previous e-commerce director at Walmart– said: “With shops closing down and lockdowns internationally, consumers now want and anticipate more products than ever to be provided to their doorstep. With this has brought new needs– it is no longer a case of waiting 24-48 hours for delivery. Rather, the expectation for this is now a matter of minutes. At Glovo we’re committed to half an hour or less with all products offered on Q-Commerce. As we continue to broaden our enhanced offering, we’re thrilled to release Q-Commerce in other parts of Spain and the rest of Europe, Eastern Europe, and Africa over the next 12 months.”
Glovo says it desires Q-Commerce to the power delivery of a vast array of items– not just meals and food from restaurants and supermarkets but anything offered in toy, music, book, flower, beauty, and pharmacy shops.
There are some apparent gaps because of the list: Clothing and shoe stores, for example, which are more likely to have their own online shopping facilities already. Plus clothing shopping is likewise more intricate– offered the propensity for returns when products don’t fit or fit. But it appears like Glovo is pursuing practically whatever else.
Alonso said Glovo currently has 22 dark shops up and running. “Popular items are anything from fresh vegetables and fruit, drinks, flowers, individual care, housekeeping products, pet food along with any main convenience brands from companies like Unilever, Nestlé, and P&G,” he told TechCrunch.
“In Glovo Supermarket, we presently manage around 2,000 unique items but this likewise depends upon the dark store, where some have more or fewer items depending on population protection and geographical area.”
Glovo says its Glovo Market service has more than 50,000 active users, at this moment– promoting the delivery of around 2 orders every minute. It likewise states it’s delivered more than 12 million “multi-category” orders worldwide to date, while in Spain the variety of orders for grocery products doubled this year to more than 1 million. Its total development rate in 2019 was more than 300% year-on-year, it added.
The Deliveroo and Uber Consumes rival has always touted itself as a “deliver whatever” app due to the fact that it uses the alternative for users to ask for anything (within bike-able factor) be brought to your door by among its gigging couriers, although most of the business involves biking fast food around cities.
Meal deliveries were making up three-quarters of its revenues at the start of this year — but Glovo has ambitions to beat Amazon at the city benefit video game of providing all sorts of stuff actually, truly quickly. And it’s got financiers on board with the strategy. Last year it raised a $ 169 million Series D and a $ 166 million Series E in quick succession.
It’s further intensified its balance sheet this (pandemic) year by offloading its LatAm ops– offering them to European rival Delivery Hero for $272 million — which implies it’s focusing its market concentrate on Southern and Eastern Europe (it likewise has a small footprint in sub-Saharan Africa, in Kenya and Ivory Coast).
Probably it sees that footprint as a better suitable for the “get things now” convenience push it’s making with Q-Commerce combined with a network of its own town hall warehouses (aka dark shops). Though last year it also stated it wished to work on developing a path towards profitability over the next year+, so strong competitors in LatAm might have pushed those markets out of reach.
Glovo says it has more than 9 million regular monthly active users, at this moment– and 55,000 “associated partners” globally; aka the gig workers who do the heavy lifting of making actual shipments for its platform.
The start-up is facing ongoing legal unpredictability in its home market over its category of “glovers” (as it calls carriers) as “self-employed”. Spain’s supreme court just recently found a rider to be in a labor relationship with the platform– and any transfer to require the company to reclassify the countless couriers it trusts in the country would drastically remodel its push for success, to put it slightly.