Hermes Germany has launched a pick-up, storage, and return delivery service under the new brand ‘ Send&Store’, to enable customers to store belongings they have insufficient space for at home
at a secure storage location.For €4.99 per month, customers can hand in at Hermes parcel shops all over Germany everythingweighing up to 31.5 kg or 25 kg, respectively, that can be packaged as a normal parcel or inspecial storage boxes made of plastic that are provided by Send&Store. These will be stored,until further notice, at a warehouse at the Hermes site in Hamburg that is monitoredaround-the-clock.
“Send & Store is a practical, new offer, which many people are interested in, especially inurban areas,” said Matthias Gosch, Managing Director of Send&Store GmbH. “They might have asmall apartment and no basement but a lot of things for which they simply don’t have space, orwhich they need only temporarily. And that is where our new service comes into play – we pick up,store and deliver diving equipment or whatever when it is needed again.”
With effect from 1 March 2015, Send&Store has become a trademark and a wholly ownedsubsidiary of Hermes Europe. Building on the results of the Open Innovation Contests that Hermesconducted in 2013 together with Liquid Labs, the start-up laboratory of the parent company OttoGroup, the new business model has been developed in just six months.
With Send&Store, Hermes is complementing its service offering in the area of parcel serviceswith a new customer-oriented component, explained Martin Kreiter, deputy managing director ofSend&Store and division manager for marketing and e-commerce business development at HermesGroup.
“Our ‘last mile’ organisation has been successful for years, prepared to pick up and hand overparcels with private recipients at their doorstep or at the Hermes parcel shop,” he said. “We arenow using exactly the same infrastructure and the experience of our delivery staff for theSend&Store offering, as the processes are almost identical.”
Liability amounting to €500 per box is included in the monthly storage price, with alloperations related to Send&Store available online. This also applies to return delivery of thegoods stored, which need to be ordered 4-5 days before the requested delivery date, for a deliveryfee of €2.99. Pick-up is free of charge.
Via an individual customer account, users can upload the contents for their boxes stored andphotos. This way, they keep an accurate overview of what has been stored at any time. In addition,individual boxes can also be ordered back separately, depending on what the customer currentlyneeds.
