How Same-Day Delivery Is A Big Opportunity In Building/DIY

Let’s imagine you’re an electrician just about to finish a big job when all of a sudden…the client asks for something extra, an unexpected add-on that requires additional tools and materials. It's frustrating and these things happen day in, day out for tradespeople. The standard solution often involves unnecessary stress and wasted time driving back and forth to the nearest trade counter to get supplies. 

Unforeseen time off site costs money for tradespeople. But it doesn’t need to be this way as DIY and trade merchants are in a fantastic position to improve efficiency for their customers by offering same-day delivery.

But if click and collect and standard delivery are working well, why should you offer same-day delivery? To put it bluntly, your customers expect it. We saw a surge of rapid grocery delivery players come to our rescue during the pandemic, delivering shopping at breakneck speed. People have started to demand this kind of service in pretty much every area of their lives and this is why DIY and trade retailers need to start paying attention. 

At the start of this year, we discovered that 56% of people expect to be given the option of same-day delivery when buying DIY items. In fact, providing same-day delivery can actually improve brand loyalty and give you a competitive advantage - 48% of consumers would buy from a retailer more often if that delivery was an option.* 

DIY enthusiasts outnumber tradespeople, yet their needs are similar when it comes to time and resources. This gives retailers the opportunity to capitalise on a large but fragmented customer base and tap into this huge audience without significantly changing their delivery operations.

The (not so) heavy lifting 

Saving customers time and making their lives easier all while increasing revenue sounds too good to be true, but it’s eminently doable. From an operational point of view, providing a same-day service is a relatively straightforward progression for many retailers as the infrastructure to succeed is already in place. 

Just as with guaranteed next-day delivery, same-day requires a single view of stock and a predictive understanding of distribution. In the case of multi-store retailers, existing branch networks provide multiple collection hubs for couriers to dispatch from. Rather than relying on a warehouse to service a large area with fluctuating demand for same-day delivery, branches can service smaller, more localised regions as the initial distribution from warehouse to store is already taken care of. From a logistics point of view, it’s as if existing trade counter footprints were designed with same-day delivery in mind.

The economic sense of same-day delivery this year and beyond

Projects live and die by the efficacy of their supply chain, working to just-in-time schedules where the smallest delay can cause a significant hit to profitability. And things are getting harder, not easier for tradespeople and customers when you add into the mix schemes such as the Ultra Low Emission Zone in London and cycle lanes and LTNs which are clogging up major roads, making it increasingly difficult to navigate our cities. 

This creates a context where cost is secondary to value, and an even stronger rationale for same-day delivery to flourish and unlock a whole new revenue stream for retailers. The trade and DIY sector is in a fantastic position to meet this demand with relative ease as the necessary systems to offer a same-day service are often already in place.

* The survey of 2,000 UK consumers was carried out by Gophr.

Source : Graham Smith, Gophr (pictured) 

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