A new website, Bringers.co, offers to make deliverymen (and women) out of people traveling abroad.
As the logic goes, there are many places where international shipping fees make it an expensive proposition to order products from other countries. There are also travelers coming from said counties that may have a bit of extra space in their bags.
Bringers connects these two groups of people by having those living abroad list their desired items on the website and how much they’re willing to pay to have them delivered. Before departing on their trip, travelers can go through the requests listed by those near their destination and make the delivery in person upon arrival.
“Say there’s a US$100 pair of shoes you want. You put that on the website. Then, on the other side, anyone who’s travelling can browse through all the listings…they can then accept the ones they’ll comfortable bringing,” explained the website’s Co-founder, Tim Beiko, in an interview with e27 last month.
The website describes how the money gets from party a to party b:
“Bringers.co acts as an escrow during the transaction. This way, as a requester you only pay for you item once someone has confirmed they can deliver it. We'll process the payment, to make sure your money is safe. Once we've secured your money, we'll notify the Bringer that they can go ahead and purchase your item. Only once they've delivered it to you and that we have your confirmation will we transfer your payment to the Bringer. On the other hand, the Bringer knows you've paid for your item before buying it, so be sure to have agreed upon the specifications (size, color, model, etc.).”
Like services such as Airbnb, Bringers takes a cut of the action (between 5 and 15 percent depending on the total value of the item).
Before you ask, yes, Bringers has addressed the concern that the service could be used for the transport of drugs.
The website’s Co-founder, Tim Beiko, has lofty expectations for its future:
“We’ve run some quick numbers, and we believe that within two years we could get up to US$1 million or so in revenue,” he told e27.
This service seems like a natural fit for those living in Vietnam (expat or local) where receiving a package through traditional delivery methods is notoriously expensive and/or unreliable.
Based on posts on the company’s Facebook page, it looks like the service is still in beta so you may have to wait a while before trying it out.
