How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
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How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#2It’s too bad, I looked into them a few years ago when I needed to ship a couple hundred items out over the course of a week or two. Ultimately it made more sense to spend 150 bucks on a label printer and clobber together a workable system to do it ourselves. They were focusing on consumers at the time but had they provided a scalable turn-key solution to small business at the time I think they could have made it work.
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#3It’s too bad, I looked into them a few years ago when I needed to ship a couple hundred items out over the course of a week or two. Ultimately it made more sense to spend 150 bucks on a label printer and clobber together a workable system to do it ourselves. They were focusing on consumers at the time but had they provided a scalable turn-key solution to small business at the time I think they could have made it work…
thats what they did a little later, pivoted towards serving physical shipping needs of small businesses but looks like picking up, packing and shipping out for just $5 per package would not cut it.
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#4I think their whole approach was off - why even have warehouses, custom packaging, etc? Why not charge what it actually costs to ship something, plus a little more?
All they need is a bunch of vans that drive around and have a bunch of boxes and tape, basically ubers. They show up, package my thing up, and take it to the closest fedex store - enough said.
No custom boxes needed. No warehousing.
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#5I think their whole approach was off - why even have warehouses, custom packaging, etc? Why not charge what it actually costs to ship something, plus a little more? All they need is a bunch of vans that drive around and have a bunch of boxes and tape, basically ubers. They show up, package my thing up, and take it to the closest fedex store - enough said. No custom boxes needed. No warehousing.
They made money through discounts on retail shipping as well as fees. Concentrating pick-ups to a small number of warehouses while doing the specific packaging and labeling and palletizing requirements of the shipper increases the discount.
If they just charged retail plus a little more the product would’ve been even more expensive.
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#6Too bad, they were pretty convenient for consumers. Made selling stuff online super snappy, as you never had to worry about packaging, dragging something to the post office and waiting in line during lunch rush hour. Any chance a still-alive competitor exists?
I remember thinking that the business model did seem tricky. Early on, when they just started, they let me ship half of my already boxed apartment for $5 + whatever USPS shipping costs. They had to bring over a truck, and I think about 3 guys to pick up the boxes over maybe an hour or so. I don't know if I was the person who had shipped the most stuff ever with the company at that point.
That was an interesting hands-on experience with watching a company deploy VC capital on early product discovery.
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#7I didn't even really know they existed. I mean, we have a package sitting in the closet with Shyp tape on it, and I guess I was vaguely aware that the person who sent it had a service package it up, but that's about all I knew. I never bothered to investigate, I never heard about them from friends or folks on the internet, but I would have LOVED to have used their service. Shipping things is one of my least favorite activities ever. It's such a hassle for so many reasons; even though I live 2 blocks from a post office it still takes 30 minutes every time I ship anything due to lines, the fact that I forgot the one thing they don't have (tape or pens or something), it's impossible to figure out which shipping vendor will be best for an unboxed item of a given size (and trying to figure out what size box to use under which vendor for which price).
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#8I think their whole approach was off - why even have warehouses, custom packaging, etc? Why not charge what it actually costs to ship something, plus a little more? All they need is a bunch of vans that drive around and have a bunch of boxes and tape, basically ubers. They show up, package my thing up, and take it to the closest fedex store - enough said. No custom boxes needed. No warehousing.
Picking up things without the boxes allowed them to use bike messengers and/or foot messengers rather than vans, which is a lot more efficient in urban areas (no traffic issues, parking problems, etc.) They'd just put whatever you gave them into a bag and then into their messenger bag. Then they'd hand off to a truck located at a central location that served multiple messengers.
I used them a few times, it was pretty cool and if you didn't have the box for something could save a bunch of time. Unfortunately I think most consumers don't ship things often enough (aside from returns where you already have a box and a label) to be worthwhile serving this way. Small businesses were better but many of them already get discounted rates from UPS if they ship a lot.
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#9Every experience I had with Shyp was flawless. Very sad to see them go.
Re: How Shyp Sunk: The Rise and Fall of an On-Demand Startup
#10All I remember about Shyp is when TJ Miller called a Shyp employee a "bitch" at the Crunchies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ1qcD6isI8
Sorry for the gossip.....