If we have to talk about the delivery services in the US, they are mostly FedEx or Amazon or other national players like the USPS or others. However, just like what Amazon did with their own delivery, Shein has done with their products as well. While it is a big challenge to launch a last-mile delivery service in a market that is as cluttered as the US is, the company still took the challenge and launched UniUni just before the pandemic. Even after the pandemic, the company has managed to create a good base for itself and now we have some news for you.
Shein’s last-mile delivery service UniUni has just raised a Series B round of CAD $20 million and it expects to raise three more trenches of its Series B round of funding by the end of this year. UniUni’s founder also said that they aim to reach the Unicorn mark of $1 Billion in valuation by 2025 which could be quite an achievement given the fact that they started operations in 2019. UniUni’s founder says that most e-commerce services will either opt for courier services or postal networks to provide last-mile delivery from warehouses to customers’ doorsteps. UniUni’s idea is that they provide “crowdsourced drivers” also known as gig drivers to deliver these parcels to customers’ doorsteps.
The founder also claims that they were able to shorten the time it takes to deliver Shein’s parcel from 10-14 days to just 3-4 days. They also mention that their delivery costs half as much as DHL and their speed is on par with them. By the end of this year, UniUni wants to be profitable in Canada and wants to expand in the US where they have just started operations. It is also worth noting that they have a strong network of 6000 drivers in Canada already and want to surpass a target of 200,000 packages delivered per day. While UniUni is operating on gig worker model so it does not have to pay full salary as well as employment benefits for its delivery partners, it says that their costs will increase if drivers gain full employment status.