The “Disruptor Series” is all about businesses that changed the game with, well, disruptive technologies and strategies. Yet, Shippit has seemingly relinquished its disruptor status by choosing to fit in.
And that is exactly why we added them to this list anyway.
“Everybody gets into the startup game to be a disruptor… but I come from a background of continuous improvement," says Shippit co-founder Rob Hango-Zada.
…and beyond.
The idea for Shippit’s award-winning shipping platform was hatched in 2014 while mates (now Shippit co-founders) Rob Hango-Zada and Will On traded experiences about misdelivered online orders over — you guessed it — beer.
What they eventually uncovered is that traditional shipping channels sometimes lack information regarding delivery dates and times. They also do not give the option for recipients to have control over this, resulting in tons of unsuccessful shipping deliveries.
For Shippit’s co-founders, it was all about 1) acknowledging current industry limitations and 2) finding better ways to address customer needs.
By the following year, Shippit launched and began servicing a handful of fashion and homeware boutiques in Sydney's famous Surry Hills. Today, their shipping engine powers deliveries for hundreds of retailers across the APAC region every single month.
The genius behind Shippit’s value proposition (and the reason why we feature them as one of Australia’s greatest disruptors) is that it aims to complement or improve existing shipping infrastructures instead of overhauling them.
From the beginning, their goal is to reduce the risk of misdeliveries and address the lack of recipient agency by partnering with online businesses as a delivery option — all while allowing service users to set their delivery timeslots, track their deliveries using GPS, and change delivery points.
How do they do this? Their process is simple.
Shippit recognises that as a business grows bigger, the need for multiple courier partners becomes more urgent.
In order to handle the influx of orders, Shippit’s intuitive shipping platform integrates with some of the biggest eCommerce systems, including Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, eBay, and most recently Uber.
This gives business owners seamless inventory management solutions as well as access to multiple courier partners, which are automatically categorised into the fastest and cheapest options.
Shippit also has a unique delay avoidance technology that detects and corrects issues that cause delivery delays before they become problems. This keeps parcels moving as Shippit notifies both retailers and customers of potential delays.
These are crucial in serving a wider range of locations — all while keeping reliability and transparency high and shipping costs low to maintain brand reputation, profitability, and affordability.
Shippit’s simple yet effective business model caught the attention of the Australian Post, Australia’s biggest shareholder in the postal and delivery markets at 80%.
Shippit’s non-exclusive partnership with the Australian Post represents a crucial step for both parties. Not only is it an opportunity for Shippit to join the big leagues while influencing and scaling their tech’s reach at a rapid pace, it also serves as a stepping stone for the Australian Post to make their services more competitive and relevant to today’s needs.
Multiple studies show that customers who are given opportunities to shop across multiple channels 1) spend more money and 2) are more loyal (whether brand- or product-wise) than those who can only shop online or only shop in-store.
However, there is one condition that must be met first: the ability to provide a consistent shopping experience from brand website to customer doorstep. This is where Shippit excels from competitors.
What we find most impressive about Shippit’s delivery platform is its capacity to assist in building a seamless shopping experience for retailers of all sizes.
This is all thanks to their “branded tracking” service that provides automated messages, dedicated tracking pages, and branded tracking features. This enables retailers to:
- Notify their customers with email notifications and dedicated tracking pages with the latest delivery status
- Add their logo and marketing materials to tracking emails, landing pages, and packing slips
- Empower their customers to easily track their orders with various couriers
Through this, online sellers are able to own their customers’ delivery experiences and — subsequently — improve their overall customer journeys.
We as scale-up specialists can see why Shippit’s branded tracking service makes them stand out.
When retailers align their branding and marketing efforts with their company identity, they get more consistent brand visibility from checkout to delivery. To explain further, we look to one of our most valued clients: Vanessa Megan Naturaceuticals.
Vanessa Megan has been an established name in the skincare world since 2001. However, despite having many loyal customers and high return rates, the brand found itself on a plateau and struggled to scale sales exponentially.
After partnering with BeingIconic, Vanessa Megan racked online sales up to 60% and orders up to 50% in November 2021. We did this by helping them create a stronger brand foundation as a whole.
Vanessa Megan’s issue was that despite having great premium products, there was a misalignment with their visual identity, messaging, and storytelling. In other words, what they are selling did not align with how they were selling it, resulting in a disjointed brand experience that was not resonating properly with their target markets.
To address this issue, we guided Vanessa Megan in building a comprehensive growth strategy that will help them create consistent customer journeys, which is a crucial factor in streamlining their brand visibility.
This intervention also helped build a stronger company purpose, which then served as Vanessa Megan’s North Star.
When it comes to helping customers buy into your brand, you need to have a company purpose strong enough to galvanise both your customers and your internal team.
The rationale behind this is that even when customers might be enticed by a great product, what makes them stay is a great brand. When your brand has something bigger to strive toward, you motivate customers to buy into that journey.
By making it easy for your customers to invest in what your brand is doing and striving to do (coupled with consistent customer journeys), you give them a reason to stick around. You turn them into brand evangelists who will now be eagerly recommending your brand to their networks… for free.
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