▲ ▼ Amazon for local retail
I'm imagining a platform for local retailers where customers can search for products in a similar way they do on Amazon and see where those products are available in their neighborhood.
They can then reserve or pay directly and pick them up later or get them delivered to whereever they want.
I know some retailers offer to check store availibility on their website but this quickly turns into a comparison across mulitple websites and then you still have only some of the potential results.
I see the idea and. have thought about this myself - especially know - how do we support the small businesses in our communities even though we can get cheaper alternatives from the giants. How do you promote this type of purchasing patterns. I guess this is similar to what Etsy has done with handmade goods?
You could have a small city by city curated site that sells on behalf of those businesses - though you aren't going to be able to add a lot of margin on this. Since they will just go to the local business to purchase. Maybe what a local business needs is a better platform. You could setup a curator in each city to manage the relationships. For delivery - I guess you could get a uber model going and just drive to locations for pick up and delivery vs standard shipping.
You are talking about Hyperlocal Business, aren't there such business which deliver groceries and other essentials in your neighbourhood? I've seen many such come and go; it seems like they struggle to make profit.
Sure, I've seen that for groceries and other essentials as well but only from a few retailers and not in a centralized app store where I can compare their offering.
Also, I didn't find something similar for books, electronics, sports goods, etc. It's just a hassle to compare every potential store in the city just to see what they offer when you could have one centralized app for that.
The main advantage of hyperlocal delivery for the customer is reducing the delivery duration, but it's not limited to hyperlocal business now as even Amazon is able to deliver the same day by shipping from warehouses within the city or from a seller within the city.
I'm liking the idea of helping the neighborhood, but package shipping is quite fast these days with overnight shipping. Selling product via an online store only meaning you don't need to pay for physical store, which means cheaper product or higher margin.