According to the tech news site Re/code, entrepreneur Louis Borders is developing a subscription based same-day delivery service that delivers products from partnering retailers on the same day they are ordered. His mission may seem recycled, but his vision has potential to be a game changer. Borders, who is not only the co-founder the Borders bookstore chain, has tried his hand at same-day delivery once before with Webvan during the original dot-com boom in the late 90s. Webvan expanded too much and too fast causing the company to lose profitability and eventually shut down in 2001.
This time around, however, Borders has a plan for profitability, and with any luck, success. His idea and vision is the implementation of a robotic warehousing system which would take out almost all human labor from the process. In an interview with Re/code, Borders stated that this model could potentially reduce operating costs by up to 50% with less than 10 percent of orders being processed by a human. The savings and efficiency from the automated system will aid in the company’s mission to provide same-day delivery for no extra cost and one-hour delivery for a small fee.
The startup, simply called Home Delivery Service (HDS), will sell fresh and packaged groceries in addition to general merchandise, putting it in a category to compete with the likes of Amazon, Wal-Mart, and startups with comparable aspirations. As for transportation, rather than using a third party carrier such as UPS or FedEx, HDS is planning on owning its own fleet of vehicles, an expensive upfront cost. With the project still in a prototype stage, no retailers are currently signed on as partners, but Borders believes that if he builds the service retail brands will come to him. There are no launch dates in place for the service at this moment, but it is believed that HDS will be lifting-off sometime next year in San Francisco before expanding to other markets.