Founded | 1999 |
---|---|
Founder | Ross Stevens [1] |
Defunct | 2000 |
Website | www.urbanfetch.com |
Urbanfetch, founded in 1999 and closed down in 2000, [2] was a dot-com company which enabled customers to order products (DVDs, music, books, snacks, gifts, etc.) online and have them delivered by bike messenger in less than an hour within certain delivery areas covering most of Manhattan and London.
The company's business plan was essentially identical to that of Kozmo.com, which led to a lawsuit from them. Apparently, the founder of Urbanfetch, Ross Stevens, had been approached to fund Kozmo, but instead launched a competing business with an identical business model. [3] The suit was settled in December 1999. [4]
Urbanfetch, like Kozmo, charged no delivery fee and sometimes offered significant discounts. Urbanfetch also gave away free T-shirts and hats with each order when it first launched and provided free warm cookies with each order. [5] It ceased operations in October 2000. [2] [6] Its corporate delivery division was sold to Urban Express, a traditional courier service. [7]
Urbanfetch became somewhat of a joke after an episode of The Daily Show parodied their business model to the Post Office. [5] [8]
Schmitt and Brown in their Build Your Own Garage (2010) conclude that the company “was buzz only and lacked a rigorous business model”. [9]
Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational technology company that focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", and is one of the world's most valuable brands. It is one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Kozmo.com was a venture-capital-funded online company that promised free one-hour delivery of "videos, games, dvds, music, mags, books, food, basics & more" and Starbucks coffee in several major cities in the United States. It was founded by young investment bankers Joseph Park and Yong Kang in March 1998 in New York City, and was out of business by April 2001. The company is often referred to as an example of the dot-com bubble. In January 2013, the brand was bought by Yummy.com and announced that they would relaunch soon. In March 2018 Kozmo was relaunched as a warehouse club.
Package delivery or parcel delivery is the delivery of shipping containers, parcels, or high value mail as single shipments. The service is provided by most postal systems, express mail, private courier companies, and less than truckload shipping carriers.
Webvan was a dot-com company and grocery business that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after 3 years of operation. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. It delivered products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing. At its peak, it offered service in ten US areas: the San Francisco Bay Area; Dallas; Sacramento; San Diego; Los Angeles; Orange County, California; Chicago; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Atlanta, Georgia. The company had hoped to expand to 26 cities by 2001.
Panera Bread Company is an American chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants with over 2,000 locations, all of which are in the United States and Canada. Its headquarters are in Sunset Hills, Missouri.
e-Dreams is a 2001 American documentary film directed by Wonsuk Chin portraying the rise and fall of Kozmo.com, an online convenience store that used bike messengers to deliver goods ordered online within an hour.
An online grocer is either a brick-and-mortar supermarket or grocery store that allows online ordering, or a standalone e-commerce service that includes grocery items. There is usually a delivery charge for this service. Brick-and-mortar supermarkets that have built internet channels to better service their clients are known as online grocers. Online grocery delivery services are available throughout Europe, Asia and North America, mostly in urban centers. The online ordering is done through e-commerce websites or mobile apps.
Pink Dot is a quick delivery prepared-to-order grocery store based on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. The store has appeared in several movies and television shows, including HBO's Entourage.
Groupon is an American global e-commerce marketplace connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods and services in 13 countries. Based in Chicago, Groupon was launched there in November 2008, launching soon after in Boston, New York City and Toronto. By October 2010, Groupon was available in 150 cities in North America and 100 cities in Europe, Asia and South America, and had 35 million registered users. By the end of March 2015, Groupon served more than 500 cities worldwide, nearly 48.1 million active customers and featured more than 425,000 active deals globally in 48 countries.
A revenue model is a framework for generating financial income. It identifies which revenue source to pursue, what value to offer, how to price the value, and who pays for the value. It is a key component of a company's business model. It primarily identifies what product or service will be created in order to generate revenues and the ways in which the product or service will be sold.
Last mile in supply chain management and transportation planning is the last leg of a journey comprising the movement of people and goods from a transportation hub to a final destination. "Last mile" was adopted from the telecommunications industry which faced difficulty connecting individual homes to the main telecommunications network. Similarly, in supply chain management last-mile describes the difficult last part in the transportation of people and packages from hubs to final destinations. Last-mile delivery is an increasingly studied field as the number of business-to-consumer (b2c) deliveries grow especially from e-commerce companies in freight transportation, and ride-sharing companies in personal transportation. Some challenges of last-mile delivery include minimizing cost, ensuring transparency, increasing efficiency, and improving infrastructure.
Omnichannel retail strategy, originally also known in the U.K. as bricks and clicks, is a business model by which a company integrates both offline (bricks) and online (clicks) presences, sometimes with the third extra flips.
Grubhub Inc. is an American online and mobile prepared food ordering and delivery platform. The company is based in Chicago, Illinois and was founded in 2004. It is a subsidiary of the Dutch company Just Eat Takeaway. Grubhub has been criticized for antitrust price manipulation, listing restaurants without permission, and allegedly misclassifying workers. Grubhub Seamless went public in April 2014 and was traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol "GRUB".
Google Express, formerly Google Shopping Express, was a service from Google which became part of Google Shopping.
American Truck Simulator is a truck simulator game developed and published by SCS Software. It was announced as being in development in September 2013 and unveiled at the E3 2015. It was released on 2 February 2016 for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS. The game is the parallel sequel to Euro Truck Simulator 2, the spiritual successor of 18 Wheels of Steel, and the third installment in the Truck Simulator series. Set in a condensed depiction of United States, the player can drive one of a choice of American-style conventional trucks, visiting various locations across the U.S., picking up a variety of cargos, and delivering them to its destination.
LaserShip is a regional last-mile delivery company that services the Eastern and Midwest United States. Founded in 1986, LaserShip is based in Vienna, Virginia and has sorting centers in New Jersey, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.
DoorDash, Inc. is an American company that operates an online food ordering and food delivery platform. The company is based in San Francisco, California. It went public in December 2020 on NYSE and trades under the symbol DASH.
Retail food delivery is a courier service in which a restaurant, store, or independent food-delivery company delivers food to a customer. An order is typically made either through a restaurant or grocer's website or mobile app, or through a food ordering company. The delivered items can include entrees, sides, drinks, desserts, or grocery items and are typically delivered in boxes or bags. The delivery person will normally drive a car, but in bigger cities where homes and restaurants are closer together, they may use bikes or motorized scooters.
Amazon Prime is a paid subscription service from Amazon which is available in various countries and gives users access to additional services otherwise unavailable or available at a premium to other Amazon customers. Services include same, one- or two-day delivery of goods and streaming music, video, e-books, gaming and grocery shopping services. In April 2021, Amazon reported that Prime had more than 200 million subscribers worldwide.