Leeds gets high speed delivery for e-commerce purchases

Thursday, August 11, 2011 - 09:24 by Graham Miller

Consumers in Leeds and three other major cities could be amongst the first in the UK outside of London to enjoy a fast delivery service linked to their online purchases ahead of the Christmas rush.

Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh are also being added to the courier scheme which will see products bought via safe shopping online delivered to the consumer's door within an hour and a half.

Courier company Shutl is partnering with some e-commerce sites to bring the speed of high street shopping and the convenience of safe shopping online together for the first time, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post.

Founder Tom Allason said that Shutl will eventually expand its operations to encompass a quarter of the country's population and he said that by November there will be an extensive network of delivery services operating to get goods to consumers within 90 minutes.

Interestingly the service is aimed at allowing high street retailers to make their e-commerce sites more attractive than so called pure play firms like Amazon which have no bricks and mortar presence in the UK.

The intention is to make shopping with multichannel retailers more appealing than simply buying with Amazon or Play.com because the speed of delivery and availability of products will be that much quicker.

As Christmas 2011 approaches and shopping sprees begin in earnest there will be a number of people who leave their present buying until the last minute and the advantages of having a courier deliver items shortly after they have been bought should become obvious in November and December.

A host of high street outlets including Oasis, Warehouse and Karen Millen are signed up to offer the Shutl service in the various partner cities and industry observers will no doubt watch to see how successful the firm can be in the current climate.