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If you work as a courier, then the very title of this piece might have caused you to groan with disbelief. It’s possible that it’s taken you several months to get over last Christmas, both personally and professionally, yet before you’ve caught your breath people are already talking about next Christmas. Here’s why. Christmas – Festivities versus Battles While for many of us the weeks leading up to Christmas are a time for festive spirit and eager anticipation, for others they’re a question of commercial life and death. That second group are the retailers. If they have good sales in the run up to Christmas then they’re usually safe for the year ahead. By contrast, a poor Christmas sales period can be the death-knell for companies because the impacts can be so huge, proportionally speaking, that they just won’t be able to recover through the next 9-10 months of ‘ordinary’ trading before the next Christmas period arrives. How might this affect you if you work as a courier? The retailers often can only ‘slog it out’ so far in terms of their pricing. For example, a new fridge made in China for one retailer is unlikely to be sold for 50% less than the same fridge made in China for another retailer. The result is that price is becoming less and less of a reason for consumers to shop with retailer ‘A’ as opposed to retailer ‘B’ because the prices are quite similar. So, the battle lines are drawn around ‘add-ons’ – such as insurance, servicing and yes, delivery services. What Can Courier Services Offer? If you’re a retailer trying to persuade the consumer to shop with you rather than your competition, you don’t have too many levers to pull in the domain of deliveries. Consumers typically don’t select a retailer based on the livery of their vans or the witty repartee of the courier drivers – they look for the following: • Speed of delivery • Price • Flexibility on delivery dates. The first two are self-explanatory. If you work as a courier then you’ve presumably already seen a move towards same-day deliveries and cost pressures. That’s now ‘business as usual’. What’s changing though is that retailers are looking to stretch that third domain above. Some are asking the unthinkable, such as: “Why can’t we offer deliveries on Sundays or even on Christmas Day itself?” The commercial rationale here is simple if terrifying: If we don’t offer this then the competition might beat us to the punch and offer Christmas Day deliveries. If they do, that could badly hit our business if we can’t respond. Oh and by the way, shouldn’t we do it to them before they can do it to us? Courier Reactions Now just how you react to such suggestions is, of course, is up to you completely. It’s also far from clear if there is actually significant consumer demand for Sunday and Christmas Day deliveries. It’s probably safe to predict that many courier drivers will regard such suggestions as an appalling intrusion into their private family and social life. Others may have grave concerns about taking another step along the 24x365 business consumerism life that is turning our society over. However, there may well be others who view this as a great commercial opportunity for themselves to earn more money. The way our society views Sundays and even Christmas Day is just not the same as the way our grandparents and earlier generations saw them. It’s an aspect of the delivery industry that needs to be recognised and catered for. Whatever your views are, if you work as a courier then you’re likely to find yourself on the receiving end of such questions in the not too distance future. Norman Dulwich is a correspondent for Courier Exchange, the world's largest neutral trading hub for same day work as a courier in the express freight exchange industry. Over 4,000 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading jobs and capacity in a safe 'wholesale' environment.
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