INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Between Amazon, FedEx, UPS and indie merchants, it’s easy to lose track of when your online purchases will be delivered
And if you’re buying something pricey or important, a lack of shipping insurance can leave you anxious and constantly checking your
porch.But a fresh startup has found unprecedented growth by letting you monitor all your e-commerce orders in one app thanks to a Gmail
Plus, you can buy insurance for just 1% of an item’s cost
Meet Route, emerging from stealth today to become the Find My Friends for packages
By helping merchants handle post-purchase satisfaction while charging consumers for insurance, this year Route has grown to $8.85 million
in revenue run rate and from 5 to 100 employees.Now Route is announcing it has raised $12 million in total through a quiet $500,00 January
pre-seed round from Peak Venture Capital and a new seed round with the rest from Album VC and strategic partner in direct-to-consumer
The cash will help Route keep up with demand and add new features to its app
Route co-founder and CEO Evan Walker tells me consumers “no longer accept the unsatisfying status quo of not knowing exactly where their
order is.”Pizza tracker but for everythingDomino’s saw sales skyrocket thanks to its highly visual pizza tracker app that shows live
updates as your pie goes in the oven, hits the road and reaches your door
Route wants to bring that reassuring experience to all of e-commerce.Route co-founder and CEO Evan WalkerWalker asks, “How could I NOT
build this company?” The 25-year e-commerce entrepreneur got his start selling video games online in 1994, and has founded seven companies
The communications gap between customers and merchants always plagued his businesses.“The big lightbulb moment happened when I was
traveling in Italy a few years back,” Walker recalls
Talking to a furniture shop owner, he heard about their troubles of shipping vintage trunks
“He mentioned he was having a lot of issues with these items breaking in transit and wished he had a solution for it.” Now there is
one.The Route iOS app for visually tracking orders officially launches today
Purchases from partnered merchants instantly show up in the app and its website via API, but all your other buys from Amazon etc
can be automatically ingested by authorizing the Route Bot Gmail extension that scans for shipping updates
Route lays out all the orders on a map with immediate access to their latest status changes, like when shipping info is received, an item
goes out for last-mile delivery or there’s a problem
There’s no need to copy and paste tracking numbers across multiple websites.The Route+ insurance program that lets customers pay for peace
of mind is launching today too
Customers get the option to add it from partnered merchants, file claims for lost / damaged / stolen packages in one tap and get
reimbursement from respected Lloyd’s of London.Walker claims that merchants that offer Route+ (which is free for them) “have seen an
increase in conversion, decreased spend on customer support teams and an improved post-purchase customer experience due to Route’s ability
to quickly handle customer claims.” Merchants can also opt to pay themselves for Route+ on every order.Route now works with 1,600
merchants and 600 carriers and has overseen shipments to 1.3 million customers in 187 countries
John Mayfield from Peak Venture Capital says, “Their phenomenal growth of acquiring over 600 clients in the first three months makes them
one of the fastest growing companies we have ever seen.”The brown box warsThe biggest challenge for Route is overcoming the thick, thick
crowd of competitors in the market
Rakuten’s Slice can pull orders from your email and also grabs you refunds if an item goes on sale after you buy it
17Track lets you paste in big lists of tracking numbers in case they’re registered to someone else’s email
Parcel offers a barcode scanner
‘Deliveries’ will set up calendar appointments for arrivals, and works on Mac and Apple Watch
ParcelTrack lets you forward it emails of purchases to monitor, and a $2.99 premium version offers live locations of your packages plus
customizable push notifications.
Route’s strength is that it’s totally free for consumers unless they want to buy insurance, and does
email tracking automatically, though it will lack manual tracking number input for a few more weeks
It has managed a 90% customer satisfaction score
Still, the startup could be vulnerable to a major player in e-commerce like Amazon or Shopify barging into the space
There are also platform risks, such as if Gmail blocked its scanning for tracking numbers, though Google is currently partnered with Route
to facilitate email scanning.“The better that Amazon gets at providing similar services, the more other merchants need those tools in
order to compete outside of Amazon,” says Walker
“From the insurance side, we are pretty good at detecting risk before it becomes a major issue and we are insuring on an individual order
basis so catastrophic incidences are minimized.” The company also has to keep a watchful eye out for fraudulent insurance claims.The
growing megatrend of purchase behavior shifting online means the once occasional activity of receiving a package has become a constant chore
Plenty of merchants are meanwhile looking to offload the complexity of keeping impatient buyers happy
If Route conquers its first market, it could move into adjacent spaces, ranging from merchant services like freight forwarding and financing
to consumer features like physical mail scanning for electronic delivery.“E-commerce is in my blood
I feel like I’ve taken 25 years of experience and started to craft a really interesting product in this space,” Walker concludes
“With commerce going more digital everyday, there is an opportunity to create a big dent.” Or in Route‘s case, an opportunity to
insure your packages against big dents.
