One of the fastest growing segments of the $450 billion U.S. e-commerce market is large, bulky goods, such as furniture, home furnishings, antiques, mattresses, treadmills and more.<\/p>\n
eMarketer predicts revenue from online furniture and home furnishings sales will reach $42.7 billion by next year, while Furniture Today, a leading online furniture news source,\u00a0reported that U.S. furniture sales\u00a0will reach $122 billion by 2020 over the next five years, a three percent compound annual growth rate.<\/p>\n
As buyers, especially\u00a0millennials, have gotten more comfortable purchasing large items online and spurred demand,\u00a0top legacy logistics companies are also eyeing\u00a0the furniture delivery business, realizing they can no longer ignore the segment.<\/p>\n
Yet a sizable chasm remains between the service online sellers are providing \u2013 often slow, expensive and uninsured \u2013 and customers\u2019 expectations of fast, affordable (or free) delivery, aka the Amazon Effect.<\/p>\n
To help close that gap, uShip today announced its In-Home Delivery program<\/a>, a fixed price, white glove service that helps online sellers better serve buyers of oversize goods with faster, more affordable, insured delivery. The service also helps e-commerce sellers\u00a0better compete with Amazon, Walmart, and big-box online stores.<\/p>\n \u201cIn an extremely competitive market, online sellers are scrambling for a turnkey logistics solution for bulky items, something Amazon, UPS and FedEx currently struggle to provide,\u201d says Mike Williams, CEO of uShip. \u201cWhen an e-commerce seller partners with uShip, they get white glove service, predictable delivery costs, and shortened transit times thanks to our proven logistics platform and nationwide network of feedback-rated transporters.\u201d<\/p>\n uShip\u2019s successful pilot program with several online merchants, including Everything But The House (EBTH), the world\u2019s premier online marketplace for authenticated second-hand items, processed over 12,000 fixed-price furniture deliveries to customers across the United States. Partners reported cutting delivery costs by nearly 50 percent, and reducing transit times by up to 65 percent, from 4-6 weeks to just 14 days.<\/p>\n \u201cuShip’s been digitizing large item logistics for 14 years and simultaneously been able to unlock trailer capacity through our network. Now a single piece of freight, from a one-of-a-kind antique to a standard sofa, a single carrier can economically manage the first mile, long haul, and last mile,\u201d says Williams. \u201cWhy take six connecting flights when you can go non-stop?\u201d<\/p>\n What makes\u00a0uShip\u2019s solution different from existing third-party, legacy third-party logistics companies (3PLs) is its API-driven technology and the thousands of unconventional carriers in its network. With 3PLs, large shipments can change hands as many as eight times from depot to door. With uShip, deliveries can be handled by a dedicated driver.<\/p>\n uShip is no stranger to large, bulky goods. Since 2004, the uShip platform has facilitated the delivery of more than 2.2 million oversize items — from cars to cranes, freight to furniture, and households to horses — \u00a0for consumers, businesses, online sellers, and logistics enterprises, such as DB Schenker<\/a>, Europe\u2019s largest land transport company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the fastest growing segments of the $450 billion U.S. e-commerce market is large, bulky goods, such as furniture, home furnishings, antiques, mattresses, treadmills and more. eMarketer predicts revenue from online furniture and home furnishings sales will reach $42.7 billion by next year, while Furniture Today, a leading online furniture news source,\u00a0reported that U.S…. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":8297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news"],"acf":{"blog_post_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"blog_post_entry_footer","blog_post_entry_footer_cta":[{"blog_post_entry_footer_cta_url":"https:\/\/learn.uship.com\/partnerships\/partnership-inquiry\/","blog_post_entry_footer_cta_text":"Contact Us to Learn More","blog_post_entry_footer_onclick":""}]}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pilot Program Results<\/h2>\n
2.2 million and counting…<\/h3>\n