Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts

01 December 2020

Faster Than Amazon?

The mayor of my city and the governor of my state raise the possibility of new lockdowns, which would mean "non-essential" businesses would be closed.  Government officials in other places are also speaking of such things.

At the same time, they are encouraging people to support small businesses.  I wholeheartedly agree, whether that "small business" is a bike shop, book store or beauty salon.  

One thing I fear, though, is that this might be the "last chance" for some establishments that barely survived the lockdowns of last spring. Whatever business they do might tide them over for the next couple of weeks, or however long they can operate before they're forced to close.

Another worry is that some customers who resorted to Amazon during the lockdowns won't return to their old shopping habits.  They may have been lulled by the convenience of having PlayStations or whatever brought to their doors.

What some small business owners have done, of course, is to start making deliveries.  Luca Ambrogio Santini is one of them.

He operates LibriSottoCasa, which he describes as "the smallest bookstore in the world."  How small is it?  Oh, about the size of one of those boxes that fits on a porteur-style front rack.




Santini once operated one of the best-known independent bookstores in Milan, Italy.  That is, until rent and management costs rose too high.  So, five years ago, he started to operate without a storefront--and with a delivery bicycle. Customers place orders on his Facebook page, on Whatsapp or via e-mail, and he delivers, mainly in the southern districts of his city.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the pandemic has been good for his business.  While he concedes that Amazon and other forms of e-commerce are convenient, he says "the physical presence of the bookseller who can advise and communicate with the customer" is "an added value" that "is disappearing" but "we must not lose."

In addition to being that bookseller we all love, he has another aspiration:  "I want to be faster than Amazon."

05 December 2019

Delivered In A Cube, On A Bike?

Fresh greens delivered on a cargo bicycle.

It's not one of those "Only in Portland" or "Only in Williamsburg" fever-dreams.  Yesterday, it became a reality--well, sort of, and for a few people and businesses--in Midtown and Downtown Manhattan.

 UPS, Amazon and DHL entered a Commercial Cargo Bike Pilot Program, in which deliveries are made on bikes with large containers attached to their rears.  DHL is already using such "Cubicycles" in Europe. New York City's Department of Transportation is collecting data on the ones launched yesterday and the DOT's commissioner, Polly Trachtenberg said the project is intended to make deliveries "safer and greener" by using those bikes instead of trucks.


H/O: Cargo bikes 1
A UPS cargo bike in Seattle.

The "greener" part seems obvious.  As for safety, Trachtenberg noted that a disproportionate number of the city's  cycling fatalities--11 of 27 to date this year--involved trucks.

Traffic congestion and its effects have long been problems in New York City.  In recent years, however, they have grown worse.  The level of fine particle pollution in the Big Apple's air actually declined, slowly but steadily, for a decade until 2015.  Since then, the levels of those pollutants, and others, have increased.  Most of that deterioration in the city's air quality has been blamed on two factors:  for-hire car services like Uber and Lyft, and the increasing popularity of package deliveries from Amazon and other retailers. 

H/O: DHL Cargo bikes
DHL "Cube bike" in Berlin


It would be great if hundreds, or even thousands, of trucks could be replaced by cargo bikes.  Could some of those containers could be fitted to accommodate passengers?