You can now get delivery from all your favourite businesses in Toronto, even ones that don't usually offer the service.
If there's something you've been wishing you could get brought right to your door, check out BLSH Delivery and you just might be in luck.
"Short for Buy Local, Stay Home and pronounced 'blush,' BLSH will deliver anything you can order for curbside pick-up to your front door if you live in the city of Toronto," BLSH founder Sarah Brown told blogTO.
"We love local and want to make it even easier for Torontonians to buy from their neighbourhood retailers instead of choosing those other online marketplaces. We believe a win-win solution is possible for retailers, consumers and couriers and that a better model exists for meeting the demand in this space beyond just trying to be Uber for retail."
According to their website, the service offers "same day delivery for anything you can buy online and collect curbside."
"BLSH was created because I kept wanting this service to already exist for years, way before COVID. There is no shortage of options to have food or groceries delivered but what about the rest?"
"The example I like to give is in 2019 I was lucky enough to move from a condo into a little house in the West End," says Brown.
"The first morning in my new home I woke up to see a huge snowfall had happened over night and naturally I hadn't yet invested in a shovel or road salt. The result was a lot of groaning about how I wished I could pay someone to bring me a shovel and salt right now so I could just focus on unpacking and also because it was cold and I don't have a car."
A simple form on their site allows you to place an order for pretty much anything from pretty much anywhere in Toronto.
"Fast forward to 2020 and suddenly things you could never really buy online are accessible. But at the same time the small mom and pop stores are struggling to compete with big retailers that can offer cheap and fast delivery," says Brown.
"Cheap delivery fees are deceiving. As we've learned from the food delivery apps there are hidden costs, like a billion dollar company taking a percentage of the total order when at the best of times margins on food are slim. In that case either the business suffers or those fees are passed on to customers in the form of higher prices."
BLSH's website states that "you and the courier agree on a delivery price. We don't charge the retailers a penny."
"We take a pretty simple approach to fees. If the customer and the courier agree the price is fair then that's the price. We don't charge retailers a penny. We don't add on hidden fees like those sneaky service charges you sometimes find on your bill and because the price is agreed to by the courier there is no expectation to tip," says Brown.
"We're also faster than ordering from Amazon or express shipping options. As soon as your order is ready for curbside pickup a courier can pick it up and they bring it right to you."
You can also apply to be a courier for the service online through the BLSH website.
"I'm a 32-year-old woman who's born and raised in Toronto. I work in finance, never dreamed of being an entrepreneur but thought I'd waited long enough for someone else to build this so I'd just have to do it myself," says Brown.
She added that her co-founder is "a 30 year old guy who lives in Montreal but moved to Canada in his teens from Senegal."
"The couriers are amazing," she said, adding: "I'd be remiss if I didn't mention none of this would be possible if there weren't people who had the same goals of supporting small business offering up their time.
"And moreover, most of our couriers currently work in, or previously held other gig economy jobs and when they reached out said they were looking for a more equitable and transparent situation."
BLSH is based in west Toronto, but services all areas of the city.
"We piloted BLSH just before the holidays in the Trinity Bellwoods area to try and capitalize on people buying last minute Christmas gifts. Slowly word of mouth spread and individual shoppers would pop up asking if they could get flowers, toiletries, clothing, posters, baked goods, all kinds of things," says Brown.
"Pretty quickly we scrapped limiting ourselves to certain neighbourhoods and made it a city-wide service. North York and the East End are actually the busiest, which is amazing. We also get asked for help outside the GTA which we hope is something we can take on soon."
While you can access BLSH delivery services anywhere in Toronto, in the west end they're partnering with other initiatives to become even more widely known and easily accessible.
"We're a partner with West Queen West and look forward to supporting the heck out of all the stores that are finally able to reopen now that we're in the Grey Zone. Also Shop a Local, a fantastic online marketplace that shares all of our values about supporting local.
"Our first official initiative with Shop a Local is the Circuit, a hyper-local shopping experience for Toronto West. Products sold by retailers in this zone can be found on Shop a Local and ordered with same-day delivery via BLSH.
"Through the Circuit, people can easily find what they’re looking for without having to search through store after store. Search, find, compare, shop, and deliver. All in one day."
Items can be delivered from boutique businesses such as Cocktail Emporium, VdeV, Midfield Wine Bar, Maguire, Euclid Farms, Easy Tiger, Likely General and Saudade.
"We also work directly with businesses who like us as a dedicated delivery option. For me this is the coolest and also most unexpected discovery of launching BLSH, getting to work with business owners who've said 'this is exactly what I've been looking for,'" says Brown.
0 comments:
Post a Comment