The 7-Eleven is starting to get a little crowded. In August, we reported that Amazon was installing lockers in the ubiquitous convenience stores where customers could have their orders delivered. Instead of waiting at home or at the office, you simply go by 7-Eleven and pick your package up.
And now, Amazon adversary ShopRunner announced it too is testing lockers in its home city of Philadelphia. One hundred such lockers, called PickUpPoints, will inhabit Toys”R”Us stores, a local chain called Ollys Shoes, and 7-Eleven. Of the three, 7-Eleven makes the most sense: It’s always open, which means you can pick up your package whenever works best for you. Amazon’s lockers are self-serve; you enter a PIN on a touchscreen, and the door to your order pops open. For ShopRunner pickups, you show a bar code on your smartphone to the clerk, who retrieves the package from the locker.
Led by former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, ShopRunner is a subscription-based service that offers members free two-day shipping from more than 60 retailers, as well as free returns. Stores on ShopRunner’s roster include Toys”R”Us, American Eagle Outfitters, PetSmart, and Calvin Klein.
At $79 per year, ShopRunner is taking obvious aim at Amazon’s identically priced Prime program, which also offers free two-day shipping. Smaller retailers who don’t want to invest in their own complex infrastructure to compete with Prime are turning to ShopRunner to handle the logistics of cheap, speedy delivery. ShopRunner’s lockers give those retailers yet more e-commerce infrastructure — ironically, in the form of a physical presence in brick-and-mortar stores.
Amazon’s lockers are striking because they’re the most visible step the world’s biggest e-commerce retailer has taken so far toward a physical presence that consumers are meant to see. ShopRunner’s lockers are striking because so many of the retailers represented by ShopRunner are themselves traditional offline stores. Their physical, non-virtual presence in malls across the country is still the core of what they do. Yet to compete in e-commerce, they now appear to need more than a website and a mobile app. They need little outposts in the backs of 7-Elevens to vie for the attention and dollars of shoppers who more than ever can expect to get what they want, when they want, where they want — and the shipping is free.
7-Elevens Get Crowded as ShopRunner Launches E-Commerce Lockers
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7-Elevens Get Crowded as ShopRunner Launches E-Commerce Lockers
