Contxto– In order to maintain leadership in the e-commerce business, Chilean retailer Falabella has signed contracts to work with logistics companies to optimize its delivery methods.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Falabella received backlash on social media due to a delivery service perceived as inefficient by its clients. Deliveries were extremely delayed while orders increased exponentially.
As of June 2020, Falabella had received the highest rate of complaints (22.8 percent) for a retail company according to the Chilean public service SERNAC.
Falabella had to adapt.
Enter Chazki, the Peruvian last-mile delivery logistics service that back in May acquired the Santiago-based startup TodoVa. In Quechua, the word chazki is used to refer to the Incan emperor’s courier. Of in more modern terms, Chazki calls itself “the Uber of logistics”.
So these guys know what they’re doing.
Chazki, along with other logistics services companies, might prove to be beneficial allies in Falabella’s quest to improve their delivery services.
Falabella and Chazki: A likely alliance
Before all this happened, Falabella had launched Fazil, an app that offers a 90-minute delivery service from Tottus, Falabella’s supermarket division.
Falabella’s plan is to drastically improve their app’s operation range in order to become a stable competitor to its biggest rival: Chilean-Mexican platform Cornershop, which launched operations in the United States last May.
The alliance with logistics companies is therefore aimed at optimizing the app’s delivery times. Fazil, with the logistical aid of Chazki, offers 90-minute delivery service from the moment of checkout.
Both companies have already worked together in Peru, so this new alliance doesn’t come off much as a surprise.
Fazil vs Cornershop
Which app is easier to use? Why would a customer choose one over the other?
As Marcel Goic, an academic from the Universidad de Chile, points out that app consumption is more about space than anything else: People navigate within the same apps over and over, and it’s not easy to orchestrate a massive download of a new app.
Cornershop is, so to speak, the go-to app for anything related to online grocery shopping in Chile. So, why would anyone choose Fazil?
According to Johann Ramberg, Falabella’s general manager of the Supermarket Area, the company expects to counter Cornershop’s strengths by appealing to their longtime client base, the shop’s inventory, and the aforementioned logistics strategy.
Another difference is that, while Cornershop’s couriers have to pick up the items themselves from the supermarkets, with Fazil’s application, the supermarkets hand the products to the delivery person. This simple difference might help reduce waiting and delivery times.
We’ll have to wait and see how the competition develops.
-BIC
