Before you mention it, I know the name is crap. But it is provisional.

The idea comes from the Ikea example: Ikea’s positionning is “good quality, low pricing”, which seems at first rather inconsistent. However, Ikea saves itself one of the worse bit of the purchasing cycle: the last mile. That’s to say the delivery and installation of the furniture. Many people have called Ikea’s strategy a “save the last mile approach”.

The same could be applied to e-Commerce. When I was trading on eBay, instead of being happy making a 3€ sale, I felt like a pain in the ass just thinking that I actually had to go to the Post Office and ship the product. It was such a waste, about 1 hour, of time just for 3€. That’s what made me stop being a seller and has so far prevented me from opening my personal shop on the Net.

Henceforth, I’ve spotted a huge opportunity for a very brick-and-mortar business, an intermediary in the e-Commerce value chain. This “save the last mile approach” intermediary is NoHasslE-Commerce.com.

Here’s how it works: you ship all your stuff to the nearest HoHasslE-commerce warehouse (note that Amazon could provide easily such a service; eBay couldn’t since they don’t operate warehouses), initial prices sticked on your items. Whilst your stuff is stored in our warehouses, you put these for sale in all the e-Commerce websites you like. If you effectively sell your items, NoHasslE-commerce ships it instantaneously to the buyer and gets half of the total amount of the sale, shipping fee charged back to you. You may change the price online anytime during the first year. After one year in inventory, if the item isn’t sold yet, it becomes a NoHasslE-commerce belonging and the initial owner doesn’t own any stake in case a sale happen. A tracking system will also remove automatically the sold item on one e-Commerce website from all the others this very item also appeared user.

There you go: NoHasslE-commerce.com is a very brick-and-mortar idea in a very virtualized world. But my bet such an initiative is likely to help e-Commerce democratize in the “busy people” and “lazy people” spheres. Hiring the right shipping/logistics/operations people, and of course a great website development team, may lower the risk a great right from the start. The only real concern I have about this business is its long-term profitability vs. cost of warehouse space lease.

What’s your stance on this e-Commerce entrepreneurial idea saving you “the last mile”, the most painful one, of your sales?

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Bibliography:

This very actually popped-up into my mind when reading the input of some bloggers on e-Commerce practices and new releases. I felt I ought to reveal my sources to you since you may also come up with good ideas reading these articles.

- in English: Minipreneurs, The Long Tail (by Chris Anderson)

- in French: Fred Cavazza’s Nous sommes tous des commerçants (thank you Hubert), Michel de Guilhermier’s The New Zlio is Live.

Addendum: Thanks to Cedric for letting me know about the existence of Mind Petals, an online community of entrepreneurs. Take a look at the site for the sake of it: well designed and some interesting stuff.

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