Shutl beats Christmas record for retail delivery
By Ben Sillitoe - 12:56PM - Thu 5th January 2012
Retail delivery service Shutl announced today that it broke last Christmas’ record for fastest delivery time during the recent festive season.
The internet start-up business has gained industry-wide recognition for the 90-minute delivery service it offers retail partners such as Aurora Fashions and Argos, but, even more impressively, last month it managed to transport a product from an Oasis store to a customer’s home 17 minutes 24 seconds after the online shopper had checked out.
EC2 in London was the destination of the fastest Christmas delivery, but it was still three minutes slower than the record set by the company in London’s NW1 postcode in March 2011.
Although these quick delivery times are inevitably a result of the customers involved living particularly close to a store, it does show how far the multichannel retail world has developed in recent times.
Next-day delivery has been the headline service offered by couriers and retailers for a number of years.
Figures released by Shutl today also indicate that consumer electronics was the most popular category type delivered this festive season, with this genre of gift representing 55 of the top 100 products delivered between November 15th and December 31st.
Amazon’s Kindle was the top seller, making up 1.6 per cent of all items delivered, but electricals giant Apple narrowly beat the online retailer to the title of most popular electronics manufacturer, accounting for 1.7 per cent of all items ‘shutl’d’.
There was also a significant number of customers who used their mobiles to order goods, highlighting the growing trend for shoppers to purchase goods from retailers with their smartphones and tablet devices.
Tom Allason, Founder and CEO of Shutl, commented: “It has been a merry Christmas for Shutl, the retailers we serve and our courier partners.
“We take it as an encouraging sign for 2012 that so many people preferred to end 2011 shopping rather than sleeping! We’re already working hard to make Shutl available to as many shoppers as possible in time for Christmas 2012.”