Tony skinner 00:04
So if you want to find out how a Sherpa can help you deliver super fast same day to your clients with a Sherpa. Stay tuned. Hi, and welcome to the podcast channel for podcast my business.com that are you. Today we have Anthony Johnson of sherpa.net.au. Anthony, are you a Sherpa?
Anthony 00:26
I am a Sherpa as well, yes. Apart from other things. 
Tony skinner 00:30
Okay. So what we’re talking about is Sherpas, people who traditionally carry items up mountains and whatever. And as a service that you’ve got, we had an interview mid COVID. And it’s great to have you back now talking about living with COVID. Because there’s been lots of changes during COVID. Lots of changes afterwards. So what are some of the biggest changes for you guys as a business and you’re seeing out in the delivery space?
Anthony 00:59
Look, Tony, there certainly have been, I guess, a significant number of changes, particularly to sort of those online purchases and the delivery expectations that consumers now have, obviously with lock down has sort of accelerated everyone’s need to have things delivered to home because they weren’t able to leave the home. And that was where Sherpa was able to really step up.
Anthony 01:21
We, our volumes basically doubled overnight at that time. And what was pleasing was that the platform that we operate on that our Sherpas received their work through, didn’t blink. And we were able to handle those volumes and do some really big volumes for important customers in the grocery space in the alcohol space, obviously very important that piece during the lockdown, but I think what it has shown is that although the numbers aren’t at that skyrocketing levels, that they once were in the height of lockdowns, they’re still considerably elevated on pre lockdown levels. So that I guess behavior, in terms of consumer preference, or delivery, to home at speed is has remained.
Tony skinner 02:06
I think that’s a key thing we’re talking about at speed. So we’re not talking about traditional model with Australia post and other couriers where, you know, you order a book online. For me, I wanted to buy a book, I looked up booktopia realized it’s going to cost me like $9 for delivery whenever it turned up and what have you.
Tony skinner 02:28
And, you know, you get there faster, which is perfect for fast fashion, you got some fast fashion that work with you as well.
Anthony 02:38
Yeah, we do Tony, whether it’s whether it’s fast fashion, you know, books, whether it’s a gifts, home wares, and whatnot, technology, a lot of IT equipment, and so forth, phones and whatnot, people do want that quicker. And we said the traditional carriers, like your australia posts of the world and so forth.
Anthony 03:02
They provide a particular service, but it’s not a fast service. And whilst it might have this large coverage, which is fantastic service, you know, I guess really specializes in that point to point from a store or from a warehouse to the consumer, and doing it at speed, you know, somebody could have wanted in as little as an hour, or two hours or four hours or Sunday option. And obviously, depending on what the customer needs, we can provide that. But we are providing that sort of fast, instead of taking potentially 2 or 3 days to receive your package. You could be receiving it literally today, you order this morning, you’ve got it this afternoon. That’s how fast we can do it.
Tony skinner 03:45
Yeah, and it’s like, amazing, I know that Amazon is doing that for select members that you pay extra for this and what have you. So it really is critical these days to get it out as quickly as possible, because people just don’t have the patience. And if they order it, they want it.
Anthony 04:03
Yeah, and I think particularly the younger generation of consumers out there, you know, they’ve grown up with, you know, fast food delivery and so forth. And that’s extended into their purchasing. And a lot of consumers want that, particularly the younger, the Gen Z’s of the world. You know, most of them want fast speed delivery, if it’s available. I think the big thing is that the take up traditionally hasn’t been hasn’t been there with a lot of the big, you know, fast fashion type companies out there.
Anthony 04:36
But you know, they can this this is available to them that they can go out there and you know, sign up with Sherpa you can get on our platform right now and log a delivery if you want it or the customer can integrate with us via our API’s or middleware platforms and so forth. So there’s lots of ways we can that that larger and smaller customers can connect with sherpa.
Tony skinner 05:01
yeah, that’s what I like about it is it’s about giving people a choice. So, you know, you’re introducing new competition into the market giving choice.
Anthony 05:10
Absolutely. And, you know, we’re not saying we’re going to replace all deliveries, we were a particular niche, it’s just I think there are more and more consumers wanting that option, if you give them that option, they can make that decision about, you know, if you’re going to go down that path, and you want to really impress your customer, that’s buying off your site, create that sort of repeat purchasing behavior within a customer subset, surface, an ideal way to do that we were that far more fulfillment.
Anthony 05:43
And, you know, if you’re doing that you feel great for your customers, they’ll keep coming back when they log online. And notice that you can get delivery of your of your T shirt in a couple of hours, where, you know, a dress for the cocktail dress for the evening. You know, a lot of consumers want that. And they’ll take that up on the go, when they when they do receive the delivery. The commentary that we get is always really high, we ask our customers to rate the service. And we’re sitting around that sort of 4.9 out of five instead of any BS score rating. So it’s always very well received when consumers do choose same day delivery.
Tony skinner 06:24
What is thinking, okay, so Gen Zed in particular, I can just see them, getting a dress for a cocktail party that evening, getting it in the morning, make sure we’re not near anybody who smokes and keep it nice and fresh and clean wrapping and packing and sending it back the next day. Job done, and they get their money back.
Anthony 06:47
Yeah, look absolutely. If it’s the wrong size, or whatnot, they need to send it back we can we can do those returns as well. So enough, we actually have some dry cleaning businesses where we pick up their returns or, and deliveries as well. So it can be used in a number of different ways our service.
Tony skinner 07:06
I did see that on your website, I was quite curious. When it said laundry, I thought wow, that’s such a great idea. I can get my all my laundry and socks and jocks all done, and just throw them in a bag and someone else takes care of it
Anthony 07:19
Absolutely, look we’ve got customers in that, that field, that sort of laundry slash dry cleaning field. And they’ll literally say, well, three times a week they do a run and it might be pickups, and they might be run of 20 or 30. And a Sherpa will do that run, they’ll upload that data to us. And they will see that run, he’ll go and pick all those items up return to the dry cleaners. And maybe the next day, they might be around going back out delivering it all back out to those, those those customers. So you know, the technology is really good in terms of visibility for the customer as well. So, you know, Mrs. Jones can see who’s herper.
Anthony 07:57
.
Anthony 08:23
And the reason we do that we allow that is that we want to give our customers customers the best experience they can possibly get. And that may mean that you know Mrs. Jones is waiting on a delivery, she sees the the Sherpa guys on his way. But she’s gonna go and get the kids from the school. She says look, I’m going to be I’m not going to be there in the next 20 minutes. Can you come back in half an hour? Or can you leave it behind the plant? And it just allows that seamless delivery experience. So they’re the sorts of things I guess that I guess sets her apart, compared to a lot of other sort of carriers that are out there.
Tony skinner 08:58
So we’re heading towards the peak season, November, December and January. So how are you guys gonna go coping with that?
Anthony 09:08
Look, I think looking at the volumes that we’ve done through the COVID period, you know, I think we’ll we’ll eat it for breakfast as they say. We’re very confident we’ve been planning for some time. So it’s a big, big part time of the year for us. But our platform, our Sherpas, they know it’s coming, we plan for it. So, you know, we expect it to be another big big year, obviously,
Anthony 09:32
November there’s a lot of, you know, click frenzies and Black Friday type events that are on. And we support a lot of customers that get on board with those programs. So we’re there to do their deliveries and the beauty of it is obviously volume start to spike at that time. You can get delays in traditional carriers with Sherpa we’ll be there we’ll have it delivered within hours to the customer. So you know it’s far more likely to have a successful delivery and at a time we do delivery with Sherpa.
Anthony 10:01
So we’re looking forward to the peak period in the Christmas season. You know, we’ve been doing it for many years now we’ve been around since 2014. So a lot of experience, we work with some of the biggest retailers, Dan Murphy’s of the world BWS, the marketing group and so forth. So we’re well placed to, you know, service that need.
Tony skinner 10:22
So can I put a Sherpa on a flight to another country,
Anthony 10:30
you could put a at the moment, the, I guess the country that he could work in would be New Zealand. So we have expanded into New Zealand and obviously with the last couple of years, with the COVID lock downs and so forth. We we did in New Zealand last year, and started that process before the more recent lock downs. challenging time, but we set up in New Zealand, we’re now in Auckland, we’re in Christchurch as well. So, yes, you could put a shirt on a plane, and he will be able to deliver in New Zealand and he got to the other end.
Tony skinner 11:02
Fantastic. So well. And I did warn you, I’ll ask you a hairy question. And that’s the best I could come up with. And bugger it , you have an answer for it. So is there anything in particular you wanted to cover?
Anthony 11:17
Yeah, look, I think, you know, in terms of, I guess, you know, businesses thinking about their delivery options as we go into the peak season. It’s important to think about that now. Because, you know, they’ve got to think about how they’re going to, how are they going to enable same day delivery, it is different to traditional delivery, namely, from their stores? Does their store have click and collect? So do they have stock visibility? If they do, they’re an ideal candidate to do same day delivery, because if they know the stocks there, we can come into their store, pick it up, you then want to set things like radiuses, how far you want to deliver from store depends on how fast you want to deliver. And where are your stores placed as to you know, the coverage that you want to get for a particular region.
Anthony 12:05
So we work with customers closely on all those aspects of setting it up, setting up the processes, they need to, you know, internally, how are they going to handle those orders in the store or from their dc, we do bulk runs as well, or what we call milk run. So if you had a warehouse or DC, you’ve got lots of volume, we can take the customer’s data, we can build out runs, and our shippers will come in and pick up they could be picking up 30 or 40. And do a run for same day delivery. So you can do big volumes out of a central location, as well as out of stores.
Anthony 12:37
So there’s a few different, I guess, options to consider when they’re considering the same day delivery that they want to look at. And then you’d also look at, I guess that integration piece of how they’re going to connect with Sherpa? Do they want to just use our platform, we’re going to web platform portal? Do they want to use a middleware platform or integrate with a number of middleware players? Alternatively, do they want to do a direct integration with server and all those things need consideration, there may be some tech work that needs to be to be looked at. That’s, that’s why I would say, you know, now’s a good time to really looking at it so that you can get things in place well, and truly for, you know, that peak season and enable, I guess your customers to, you know, have a great shopping experience and getting the product delivered in the quickest possible timeframe. So those are important things.
Anthony 13:26
And once you do decide that you want to go ahead, how are we going to promote it. So obviously, same day delivery is a premium option. It runs us to the typical Australian high standard, and it’s three to five days. If you do same day delivery, you want to be promoted through your socials, on your website at the checkout, how you’re going to charge for all those sorts of things needs to be considered. But it is a big selling feature. And as we move through the peak period, as timeframes start to get longer and longer for traditional carriers to deliver, you know, you don’t want to disappoint your customers as well.
Anthony 14:02
There will be a time when the major customer carriers will actually stop in take off fright they’ll go right on this date. We’re not taking any more freight Sherpa delivers right up until Christmas Eve asked me that we got so so we were you know, we’re 364 days a year. Basically everyday but will have Christmas day off. But our people are on. You know, we’re operating from 7am to 9pm, seven days a week. So the support services are there to support our customers and our drivers and our delivery partners being our Sherpas, they will deliver from 7am till 9pm.
Anthony 14:38
So, you know, we could take an order from a customer potentially at three or four o’clock in the afternoon and have it delivered that afternoon evening. And so it gives you really extends your delivery window during, you know, a day period and even over the weekends as well when traditional carriers don’t operate.
Tony skinner 14:58
Yeah, and you’re right it is premium service. But if you put it on your site, and you give it as an option, then people know or same day or two hour or four hour, whatever it is, yes, I’m gonna have to pay for that. And that’s reasonable. And this is the price.
Anthony 15:11
And that’s how we do, you know, a big volume of work for the likes of Woolworths and so forth, then, you know, those customers do pay for delivery, they choose to PayPal, people are happy to pay for delivery, because they want their groceries in an hour, or 30 minutes. And same with a lot of people are willing to pay a bit extra for that getting it now, rather than waiting two or five days, having that certainty is a big thing. And if you give your customer that sort of that experience, they’re more likely to come back, they’re more likely to become a repeat purchase customer, which is what all businesses are looking for.
Tony skinner 15:50
Wow, it’s a lot different. I remember going shopping with my mom, and you’d get home delivery, is it frozen items, of course. And you put it on the trolley, they charge you an amount for it. And she’s a there’s I think something or something like that you could go shopping, and you’ll get it sometime, just dumped.
Anthony 16:14
Yeah, yeah. And look, I guess the thing with with Sherpur is, you’re getting it that day. And it could be in as little as one hour or two hours, depending on what the customer selected. So they’ve got certainty they’ve got they can see their ship, but they get the notifications of when their ship has picked up the goods and when they’re going to arrive.
Anthony 16:32
So all of those things just make for a better experience. I think Long gone are the days where, as you said, you know, they you can get delivery on Thursdays and Tuesdays for example, and just be home all they don’t want to wait all day. And that’s the beauty of on demand, same day delivery options is he can say, well, I’d like it within two hours, and you plan around your own your own life. And that’s that’s what I guess chef brings brings that flexibility and be able to work with your your customers. So it’s certainly an area that is growing every year. And more and more people want this type of service. I think it’s I think it’s the retailers, the smart ones are already on board. And the others are all thinking about it. And there’s everyone’s got priorities in their in their business world. But this is one that can have a big impact on customer sentiment and customer satisfaction.
Anthony 17:29
So we’re happy to talk to any businesses that are interested in you know, I guess give our experience on what we’ve seen done really well what works really well the things not to do, you know, that sort of thing that we can sort of bring to the party and assist them in their journey to you know, being able to go to Sunday deliveries
Tony skinner 17:49
Are any of your Sherpas drones.
Anthony 17:53
Look No we’re not in the drone space. I did hear an unfortunate incident in I think it was up to one way or the other week where some they took out half the suburbs power supply with a drone running into the power lines. Most unfortunate but no. So we’re leaving that to others who knows in 10 years time where we’ll be but at the moment our our Sherpas are typically in in vehicles, cars, motorbikes, and vans. So depending on what the requirement is, you might have a much bigger delivery and you need a van. We can do that for a customer as well. So yeah, but what was the secret of the drones for the time being leave that to the to the experts?
Tony skinner 18:36
Absolutely a wise decision, are all thank you so much, Anthony. That’s Anthony from sherpa.net.au.
Anthony 18:46
Thank you, Tony.
