Valentine’s Day is on the horizon, and retailers are falling in love with logistics and transportation companies. BJ’s Wholesale Clubs, American Eagle Outfitters and Ashley Furniture are just a few of the names that have made recent acquisitions to help them get products to their stores and customers faster, and in as many ways as possible.
But to be able to offer timely delivery options like same-day, next-day and returns, retailers desperately need shipping capacity that can juggle them all. A new merger between Israel’s Bringg and Zenkraft, the leading parcel and return delivery solution for Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), hopes to deliver it.
The fulfillment cloud platform provider, which offers retailers access to a network of delivery and fulfillment options, acquired the Delaware-based company for an undisclosed fee in a move that will provide retailers with a flexible supply of drivers to manage their parcel and returns deliveries.
“Bringg is a fulfillment and delivery orchestration platform,” CEO Guy Bloch explained to Modern Shipper. “We made it our mission to help every brand out there, regardless if it’s food, QSR, groceries or retail and all of its flavors.”
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According to Bloch, the Zenkraft acquisition will help Bringg to “Uberize” retailers’ parcel delivery, which still accounts for the bulk of all global deliveries. It’s a necessary step considering how consumer behavior has evolved in recent years.
“Consumers like you and I will always shop where it’s convenient, cost-effective, fast and reliable,” Bloch said. “You do it right, you win the game. If you don’t do it right, people won’t buy your product. Or, they might buy your product, just not from you –– they’ll buy from a marketplace, which means you sold your product, but you lost the customer.”
With Bringg, retailers can democratize their delivery and fulfillment options, picking and choosing where, how and through whom they want to sell products. Ultimately, that gives them the final say over the customer experience, which is becoming increasingly intertwined with retailers’ ability to create strong logistics networks.
“Now, I control where, how and when I’m going to receive my package. That’s what eventually converts the shopping experience into checking out, and then actually buying the product with the brand,” Bloch explained.
Not only that, but retailers can use the platform to enable options like same- or next-day delivery, curbside pickup, and now parcel and returns delivery all from one unified platform.
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For Bringg, the acquisition is more than just an expansion of its offering. It’s also accelerating the company’s integration into Salesforce’s ecosystem of retail customers and delivery providers, building on its preexisting integrations with Salesforce Commerce Cloud and the company’s order management system.
“It will be a positive synergy for the two companies, and we can now boost their customer base with so many more capabilities,” added Bloch.
Adding more capabilities is top of mind for Bringg, and the company hinted at the Zenkraft acquisition being the first of many in the coming months. Bloch told Modern Shipper that perfecting the customer experience is a big reason why Bringg is in business, and that goes beyond perfecting the last mile.
“There’s so many moving variables to the customer experience. It’s not just the last mile — if you take it a layer deeper, into the middle mile, into the first mile, into the warehouse, into the stores, into the inventory, there’s so many other components,” he said. “That last mile, that’s what we’re perfecting. But in order to perfect the last mile, you also need to perfect the miles before.”
Bringg’s purchase of Zenkraft builds on its December partnership with fulfillment company Blue Yonder and its June partnership with last-mile provider GoFor.
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