The Last Last Mile
On Black Friday, we wrote about the dangers of the Buy Now Pay Later industry, which takes advantage of our psychological makeup to trick us into spending more than we can afford. From our lips to Uncle Sam’s ears: Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it is collecting “information on the risks and benefits of these fast-growing loans” from five leading BNPL companies. It’s not (yet) the breakup of Big Tech, but it’s something.
OK, enough told-you-so. On to the post.
As I age (happening more and more recently) it feels as if the call from the Old World grows louder. We’re in the U.K. checking out boarding schools for my oldest (I’m a wreck over this) and telling my boys stories of their grandparents and the war. My mom and dad were born and raised in London and Glasgow, respectively. It’s the perfect vacation: We’ve watched 1917, Dunkirk, and the Blues (Chelsea Football Club) draw with the Toffees (Everton). Tomorrow we’ll see Tottenham face off against Liverpool. I love it here and want our soon-to-be teenage boys to be somewhere besides Florida for a few years. But that’s another post.
The U.K. is responsible for some of the world’s greatest innovations, including chocolate bars, the hovercraft, Adele, and … next-day delivery. Not Jeff Bezos, but a 19th-century Welsh flannel-maker. In 1861, Pryce Pryce-Jones (great name) began accepting mail-in orders for his flannels and promising next-day delivery nationwide. By 1880 he had more than 100,000 customers. One of them was the Queen, who later knighted him.
Sir Pryce-Jones leveraged the British railway network’s expansion and brokered a deal with the North Western Railway Company for three carriages on the Newtown-Euston line. These carts moved the flannels across the country daily. He then closed the gap between production and distribution. This meant building a warehouse next to the Newtown station. Then a factory next to the warehouse and a post office next to the factory. Pryce-Jones realized people liked his flannels but loved immediacy. Speed was the differentiator.
A century and a half later, Pryce’s impact has manifested in Jokr, Buyk, Gorillas, and Fridge No More. These firms were all birthed during the pandemic and may be points in a line of the prosperity often registered post-crisis. New York City has become a petri dish for dozens of budding delivery startups. They’re recrafting the supply chain with hundreds of millions in venture capital to achieve (roughly) the same thing:
Get you your shit fast, really fast.
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Πηγή: profgalloway.com
