Ready for launch
We have commenced our six-month roll out of the UK’s first ever parcel postboxes to make sending parcels as easy as posting letters.
The 1,400 parcel postboxes are being positioned on high streets, at mail centres and in other convenient locations across 38 towns and cities, including Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff and Leeds, allowing small businesses and online marketplace sellers to despatch customer orders outside regular office hours using Click & Drop, our market leading online labelling system.
The parcel postbox rollout is just one of the ways we are investing in our network to meet the growing demand for parcels – driven by the rise of online retail.
In 2017, e-commerce grew four times faster than the wider UK retail market. At the same time, the UK retail market is becoming tougher, due to factors including rising costs and the structural shift to online shopping. Pure play online-retailers, including many marketplace sellers, are driving consumer behaviour and growth.
In August 2018 we announced a trial of 30 parcel postboxes in Northampton and Leicester. This was the first trial of its kind in the UK, allowing small businesses and marketplace sellers to post pre-paid parcels through postboxes in the same way that they post letters. It was also the first major change of use for the postbox in its 160 years of existence.
The changes have become necessary thanks to the growth in online shopping. In 2018, 72% of UK internet users said that they shopped online. According to Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2018, this was up by three percentage points from 2017. The top two retail sites, Amazon and eBay, reached 89% and 69% of the UK online audience respectively. And more than half of all internet users claimed to do more of their shopping online. This is up across all socio-economic groups, but rises to 62% for AB internet users compared to 40% for DE internet users.
This increase in e-commerce has triggered huge growth in the number of people operating small businesses from their own homes and selling items on marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay. These ‘front-room sellers’ are operating across the UK in both cities and rural areas, and rely on the efficient delivery of their products to boost their all-important marketplace rating.
We quickly established from customer feedback that our sellers were increasingly time poor as they juggle busy home lives with the growing demands of running a flourishing business. As their businesses grow, they need to demonstrate higher levels of professionalism to maintain a healthy customer base.
Based on this premise, we considered ways we could rethink existing services to provide greater convenience. Parcel postboxes will help time-poor business people, enabling them to post their merchandise out of hours, rather than needing to wait for Customer Service Points to open for business.
This is yet another example of how we are looking to innovate our existing products and services to better reflect the fast-changing market of e-commerce.
