Errand Service

alexlyons

Ok so just an idea I've been bouncing around for the past while, and I think there is definitely a gap for it.

Basically its a small errand service that aims to make the lives of busy families that bit easier.

Nothing major at all, we're not talking doing a weeks shopping, just small stuff.
A few examples would be; needing to post a parcel, so having to queue up in the post office etc.
Or say having done the weeks shop you discover you need more milk, or the kids need to bake something for tomorrow so you need more eggs etc.

Basically anything that needs doing, it could also be picking up that larger parcel motel item from Finglas, or bringing an item back for exchange of a different size or a credit note etc.

Some people have the opinion that they would just do it themselves. Brilliant, off they go, but they aren't my target audience.
This is aimed at busy families when something like this comes up, it is a sizeable inconvenience for them who are able to afford the slight extra expense the service charges instead of doing it yourself.

It would be extremely professional, uniformed individual delivering exactly what's required at the exact time specified.

So would you use this service, and if so, how much would you pay for it?
A number of different levels, basic being the most popular which would include a description of what is required to be collected (everyday items, not a blue t-shirt with a picture of Enda on it, although this can be done!) these being purchased and then delivered to the address at the set time. At the basic level the items need to be available within 7km of the delivery address.

The Poll is for the basic level and the fee would include whatever errands can be carried out at the same shop (within reason, if there is a post office beside a supermarket and an item needed to be posted and something purchased, one fee would be sufficient)

jimmii

Its basically just a concierge service but for poor people! Most of these work on a membership model (read an interview with a guy the other day whose top end membership is £30k+costs!) so I guess there might be a market for people who just want the odd thing done every now and then. If you are only charging €5 I doubt you would have enough time in the day to make it pay enough you would have to be doing 40+ errands I would have thought.

I can't think of anything I would use this service for to be honest I guess if there was something I needed doing that I didn't have the time to do myself then I would happily hand over a fiver for someone else to do it!

In the UK there are loads of these companies this is one of the few that seem to be operating here http://www.conciergeireland.com/

alexlyons

Thanks.
The aim would naturally be to carry out as many errands as possible in the same place and then deliver as required, which would save time and give a better return.

That website isn't exactly great and the copyright is 6 years old!

jimmii

alexlyons wrote: »

Thanks.
The aim would naturally be to carry out as many errands as possible in the same place and then deliver as required, which would save time and give a better return.

That website isn't exactly great and the copyright is 6 years old!

Yeh the website is shocking! If you look at the UK ones you get an idea of how they normally work. I still think you would be better targetting the high end earners but I guess there just isn't the same sort of numbers here as there is in London. There they can just sign up one exclusive apartment building to use their service and they immediately have a large customer base.
http://www.conciergelondon.co.uk/#/london/
http://www.quintessentially.com/our-service.html

I think a budget concierge service, while nice, I think it would be very tough to make any money out of.

pedronomix

I know the people who run this http://www.anotherpairofhands.ie and it is a real struggle to gain any scale. It is more targetted at the elder community but still one would have thought it would have done better. Tight budgets are the big hold back, I think.

highlandseoghan

Hi,
I like your idea and can see some people loving it. The issue I have from a business point of view is, I feel it would take a good 2 years to build up any sort of decent level of customer base. So you would need to be able to survive for at least a year without relying on money coming in from the business. It would need a lot of marlketing, facebook - twitter you could do handy enough and would start generating interest but your also going to need I feel either leaflet drop to 1000s of houses and then 2 - 3 weeks later leaflet them houses again or go door to door yourself meeting your target market and explaining your new business.

Ideally it would be perfect if you could get a few orders from 1 area to the same shop at the same time but realisticly that aint going to happen certainly not in the first few months.

If you charge €5 to collect my package from Nightline in Finglas. Out of that €5 you have to pay for fuel to get you from where your based to finglas and if I live 7Km from Finglas after fuel, wear and tear on vehicle, insurance your left with zero. You need people to be paying a minimum of €10 and I don't know if your target market would be willing to pay €10

You then have the risk factor, Say johnny who is 15 rings you to collect a pack of fags, Mary 17 rings you 20 minutes later orders bottle of vodka when you arrive and see these are kids you legally can not give them the fags or alcohol which leaves you out of pocket.

I'm not trying to be negative and there is times I would definetely use your service if it was at the €5 mark but I just struggle to see where the profit can come from.

alexlyons

highlandseoghan wrote: »

Hi,
I like your idea and can see some people loving it. The issue I have from a business point of view is, I feel it would take a good 2 years to build up any sort of decent level of customer base. So you would need to be able to survive for at least a year without relying on money coming in from the business. It would need a lot of marlketing, facebook - twitter you could do handy enough and would start generating interest but your also going to need I feel either leaflet drop to 1000s of houses and then 2 - 3 weeks later leaflet them houses again or go door to door yourself meeting your target market and explaining your new business.

Ideally it would be perfect if you could get a few orders from 1 area to the same shop at the same time but realisticly that aint going to happen certainly not in the first few months.

If you charge €5 to collect my package from Nightline in Finglas. Out of that €5 you have to pay for fuel to get you from where your based to finglas and if I live 7Km from Finglas after fuel, wear and tear on vehicle, insurance your left with zero. You need people to be paying a minimum of €10 and I don't know if your target market would be willing to pay €10

You then have the risk factor, Say johnny who is 15 rings you to collect a pack of fags, Mary 17 rings you 20 minutes later orders bottle of vodka when you arrive and see these are kids you legally can not give them the fags or alcohol which leaves you out of pocket.

I'm not trying to be negative and there is times I would definetely use your service if it was at the €5 mark but I just struggle to see where the profit can come from.

Thanks for the input, some fair points made there.
First, the nightline collection service would be above the basic level offered, thus would demand a premium. Granted this may completely take away from the savings people make using the service, while PM also offer delivery. I don't feel it would be a big money maker but may be something to offer. Bearing in mind you get an exact time of delivery, which you don't get with nightline. Again, this was just an example of ideas that may work, I'm not saying it will.

The risk factor you mention I think would only be an issue if the service was done stupidly. Naturally I'm not going to go taking orders for restricted goods without previous contact with the customer.
There are extremely easy ways to prevent this, so I see it as a complete non issue.

Again, Thanks, I do appreciate the comments, the more the merrier!

I would think this is a business for someone who wants to make pocket money in the local neighbourhood, ie. a teenager
I can't see any money in the concept at all in terms of profits, or even a one man show making enough profit to earn a meagre living out of it.

Cianos

Have you looked at TaskRabbit?

ifah

If you're looking to proceed - would you consider targeting Business Areas, instead of neighborhoods - the likelihood of reaching your target audience quicker would be much improved ....

So just as an example - target the IFSC - you will need a very professional, responsive online presence and then start promoting your services. Benefit is that you will potentially have a higher concentration of interested individuals.

Atomico

I think the main reason why it's a struggle to build these type of businesses is that the amount of money people will be happy to pay for small tasks to be completed by others is not sufficient to turn a profit once you factor in your own costs.

I know TaskRabbit laid off some of their employees lately, and then you have a lot of different players in the market - it's very competitive. You have SortedLocal in the UK and other companies, and in Ireland I don't think the potential market is big enough to sustain such a service.

Cianos

There was a crowd that blew up across Facebook a few months back who offered a hangover delivery service - it was €5 or €10 (can't remember) for them to bring a breakfast roll, cigarettes or whatever else to your house on a Saturday or Sunday morning. It went viral and they have 32,000 Likes on Facebook - I just checked and the whole thing looks to be shut down.

For the amount of hassle it'd take to complete an order, commute to and from the customer's house, money on fuel or other costs, I'd be surprised if the whole thing was making more than minimum wage.

If it was cleverly serving a niche with a high enough value prospect and in turn a high enough justifiable cost then it could work but as others have said, what people are willing to pay to get these general small tasks addressed wouldn't give enough return for all the work required to deliver.

Atomico

Cianos wrote: »

There was a crowd that blew up across Facebook a few months back who offered a hangover delivery service - it was €5 or €10 (can't remember) for them to bring a breakfast roll, cigarettes or whatever else to your house on a Saturday or Sunday morning. It went viral and they have 32,000 Likes on Facebook - I just checked and the whole thing looks to be shut down.

For the amount of hassle it'd take to complete an order, commute to and from the customer's house, money on fuel or other costs, I'd be surprised if the whole thing was making more than minimum wage.

If it was cleverly serving a niche with a high enough value prospect and in turn a high enough justifiable cost then it could work but as others have said, what people are willing to pay to get these general small tasks addressed wouldn't give enough return for all the work required to deliver.

Yes as I was writing my last post I was thinking of mentioning those guys too, they launched with lots of hype but checked the page last week and they are now a completely different website / venture! The page still says Dublin Hangover Service (since you can't change the name once you get to a certain number of likes), but it says it has closed and redirects to another site now.

I would say they were running completely at a loss.

Would agree that if you can identify a very strong niche, it might work. Perhaps there is a market in densely populated, affluent areas of Dublin, provided you are really well-presented and build up some nice word of mouth / referral business.

Still think it's not really a runner though, for the reasons I mentioned.

sandin

nearly everything you state can be done online.

except for doing lodgements through a machine, I haven't needed to be in a bank for a long time, I can pay most bills and buy stamps online, I can buy groceries online, I can get a parcel collected from me and delivered via fastway and An Post (an post only in selected areas at present).

Yes, an older person may not be online savvy, but they tend not to want things in a hurry like us (ahem) younger folk do!

As above - its something that possibly is needed in a local area operated a teenager wanting pocket money - like the old scouting bob-a-job.

But yes, the idea is good, but unfortunately just not feasible.

alexlyons

sandin wrote: »

nearly everything you state can be done online.

except for doing lodgements through a machine, I haven't needed to be in a bank for a long time, I can pay most bills and buy stamps online, I can buy groceries online, I can get a parcel collected from me and delivered via fastway and An Post (an post only in selected areas at present).

I think you kind of missed the point a bit. But thanks for the feedback.

alexlyons

alexlyons wrote: »

I think you kind of missed the point a bit. But thanks for the feedback.

I don't see how he missed the point. Think about it, the time it takes to call you, or book your service is the same amount of time it would take do it online with someone else.
If your kinds of errands are too small for a supermarket because they aren't profitable and someone sends you down to the shop for a litre of milk and a sliced pan, total value 3 euro, what are you going to charge them for this, 5 euro delivery fee?

If they live 4km away from the store your driving an 8km round trip to their house and back, calculate the petrol cost, never mind the actual cost of having the car in order to run your business - tax, insurance, purchase of the car - because we are talking about a full time professional service like you said, so the car is not going to be a family car anymore.
Factor in the cost of your uniforms, your website, your hosting, your phone bill, your internet cost, your electricity, SEO.

Lets say you do 2 deliveries an hour, for 10 hours a day 5 days a week. You make 5 euro for each, you take in 500 euro a week. Petrol around 150 of that, your other costs amount to at least another 100. So your left with 250 quid a week, and you've not paid any rent remember. If you had more then one staff you would have to pay rent because your guys can't be just sitting around at home, otherwise things would fall apart. You'd need a base somewhere.

Maybe you charge 10 euro for the break and milk, but if anyone is wealthy enough to pay 13 euro for their bread and milk and not care about the price, they are wealthy enough to have someone that is already doing their shopping already, ie. a nanny.
If they aren't wealthy they won't pay that much, unless they were really desperate.

This is not even a mom and pop business its a pocket money business. Because the only possible way it even has a chance to work is if your living at home with your folks, they are paying all your costs, rent rates, internet et, giving you the family car.
In the real world its not scaleable and has no chance to work as a proper business. The numbers don't lie, minor crunching of them will tell you that .

alexlyons

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't see how he missed the point.

He missed the point not by way of viability, and I'm aware of the numbers, but in terms of what would be offered and why its offered.

It is not designed to replace online purchasing etc. He mentioned one could get a parcel collected from home to be posted. This brings back in the timing aspect, you can never really be sure when they'll turn up, I've done it enough to know. This service is designed to keep postage costs only slightly higher than an post (cheaper than a courier) and give guaranteed timings, rather than waiting for a courier.

I am aware the finances don't stack up properly in terms of a business to live off (although I do feel from my research 2 deliveries an hour is the absolute minimum that would be done, if it was marketed right), but my original question wasn't whether it would work, it was whether people would use it. There may be other aspects that would bring the finances in line.
I do appreciate all the feedback, and I did post it in this section as I wanted a certain amount of it, rather than say the newborns forum for example.

highlandseoghan's post is a perfect example. Answered whether it would be used and provided a business view as well. As I said, I do appreciate all the feedback I have gotten so far.

sandin

I didn't miss the point - my point is those who want stuff done quickly can use technology. Those who would possibly use a service like you are talking about, usually have more time on their hands (retired) and able to do it in their own time.

With most people mobile and so many things available locally, its as said, a small market more suited to local kids.

But that said - there could be a market in training up teens or even sprightly retirees and give them accreditation / ongoing support & market under a single banner. I think there's a baby sitting service like that.

alexlyons

sandin wrote: »

I didn't miss the point - my point is those who want stuff done quickly can use technology.

And I'm talking about scenarios, of which there are plenty, where technology doesn't adequately fill the gap.

Atomico

sandin wrote: »

nearly everything you state can be done online.

except for doing lodgements through a machine, I haven't needed to be in a bank for a long time, I can pay most bills and buy stamps online, I can buy groceries online, I can get a parcel collected from me and delivered via fastway and An Post (an post only in selected areas at present).

Yes, an older person may not be online savvy, but they tend not to want things in a hurry like us (ahem) younger folk do!

As above - its something that possibly is needed in a local area operated a teenager wanting pocket money - like the old scouting bob-a-job.

But yes, the idea is good, but unfortunately just not feasible.

There are loads of things that you can't do online, plus I doubt you'd be hiring someone you don't know to do your banking?! That vast majority of people don't do their grocery shopping online either.

OP, check out Agent Anything, they do (or did) exactly what you are proposing - except they used students for the errands! That could be angle for you? I am guessing this venture won't pay enough to sustain you, should you go ahead with it.

Agent Anything launched three years ago, but I don't know how they are doing, or if they are still running - I see their Facebook and Twitter haven't been updated since last November.

Do you not think the population of Ireland is too small for this kind of thing? AA are / were based in New York.