If you've ever moved, renovated a house, or simply shopped online for multiple items at once, chances are you've been confronted with a very familiar quandary.
Packages and boxes are likely to come in at very different times, depending on what you ordered, what's in stock, who's fulfilling it, and how much manpower your package might require.
Related: Marshalls and TJ Maxx customers get very good news
If you order from Amazon (AMZN) , for example, you might have noticed a relatively recently implemented feature which prompts you to select the day you might want to receive your packages. Many times, if you've ordered multiple items that are going to ship in separate boxes by default, you are now presented with the option to ship these items in the same box, at the same time, thereby delivering your goods together, and saving delivery Amazon stops and time.
It's a seemingly simple idea that requires a lot of backend logistics, but it's well worth it in the long run for retailers to offer this option, since most people don't need dozens of small boxes piled up over a few days when they easily could've waited an extra day for their orders to arrive together.
Wayfair planning a big change
But offering this option can be complicated. It requires staggering shipments for a customer if they order two or more items, particularly if they order multiple items across a span of several hours or even days.
The challenge is even more complex if a retailer is dealing with heavy or bulky items that take up more truck space and require manpower for assembly and delivery.
Wayfair (W) , which specializes in larger home furniture items and appliances, which can make efficient delivery tough, especially when its first priority is speed of shipment. If a customer orders a set of dining chairs, plus a table, plus a sofa, the odds that those items are all getting delivered in the same shipment are slim to none.
Until now, that is. Wayfair management announced in its Q4 earnings call that it will now offer business-to-consumer (B2C) delivery consolidation, a convenience previously only offered to business-to-business (B2B) accounts. Now, Wayfair will work with customers to fulfill a shipment at the same time, helping to make a previously complicated process more streamlined.
Wayfair works to make customer process easier
"Whether you're moving houses or you're doing a renovation or you're an interior designer doing a project for a client, or you want all the items for your bathroom remodel before your contractors show up at a given day or you're helping your son move into an apartment. And you can basically pick an order of a set of large and small items, pick a date in the future that you want them all to be delivered and they can then be delivered at the same time on that date in the future," CEO Niraj Shah explained on the earnings call.
Delivery consolidation is also beneficial to Wayfair, since customers may then be more likely to buy from a store with an easier transaction and delivery process.
"And so maybe you wouldn't have bought that coffee maker from us, but if it's going to be one of the many items you want it delivered at the same time, you might as well just buy it from us instead of buying it somewhere else," he continued, adding, "As you can imagine, delivering things one at a time is less efficient than delivering a lot of things all at once."
