Point Pickup’s CEO, Tom Fiorita, goes to considerable lengths to distinguish the final-mile delivery company from Silicon Valley tech platforms.
“We’re an East Coast firm — I wouldn’t call us a Palo Alto type of an organization,” said Fiorita of the Connecticut-based startup.
Nor does Point Pickup “just build technology,” he said, “and hope that people follow or try to drive sales and not be able to catch up.”
What Point Pickup does do is provide a delivery platform for retailers that allows them to serve the customer, “their golden nugget,” said Fiorita.
“We’re an enterprise’s best friend,” he said. “We’re an enabler for them to control the technology.”
On Thursday, Point PIckup announced a raise of $30 million from BBH Capital Partners. The Series A investment joins previous seed rounds from private investors and CT Innovations, a venture capital group that supports startups in Connecticut.
The capital will allow Point Pickup to scale at the rate customers and their customers are requiring, Fiorita said, and that includes innovation, talent, technology and expansion.
Founded in 2015, Point Pickup provides a same-day last-mile delivery service for retailers in all 50 states. Its customer list includes Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, Giant Eagle and Fresh Direct.
The company’s tech integrates via API, allowing the client to have full oversight of its URL. Among its differentiators, the company asserts, is that Point Pickup is the only platform offering pre-scheduled deliveries with favorite drivers while accommodating on-demand requests.
“We’re basically reintroducing the milkman to every neighborhood in America,” said Fiorita. Trust is a key metric for successful home delivery, he explained, and “we believe predictability matters. When you can start matching up drivers to the same customers, this is incredibly powerful.”
As demand for e-commerce intensifies, last-mile delivery companies are seeing a boom in demand and growth opportunities. Just last week, Uber (NYSE: UBER) announced the integration of its new last-mile delivery service, Uber Direct, into its Uber Freight shipper platform.
And with e-retailing giant Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) setting (and raising) the bar for fast, same-day delivery, retailers around the country are looking for every opportunity to improve efficiencies tied to online shopping.
“We look at building our platform to help all the enterprises to become very strong competitors of Amazon,” observed Fiorita.
As for Point Pickup’s East Coast bona fides, Fiorita believes the coronavirus pandemic will lead to entrepreneurs migrating away from the West Coast. “You’re going to start to see movement across the country,” he said.
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To stanch ride-share bleeding, Uber looks to move packages, not people
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