Get Fast and Furious With Q-Commerce

Many busy, digital-native consumers would rather stay at home than venture out to retailers. As a result, demand for near-instant, last-mile delivery is skyrocketing. To meet this demand, quick commerce, or q-commerce, promises customers deliveries in thirty minutes or less.

The q-commerce market for food and grocery earned $25 billion globally in 2020. Experts anticipate this number to exceed $72 billion by 2025. Delivery Hero, one of the biggest players in this market, recently reported a whopping 400 per cent year-over-year growth.

Q-commerce offers brands the ability to get products to customers minutes after they think about buying. For example, Estée Lauder partnered with Uber Eats in 2021 to deliver their products within sixty minutes.

Interested in taking advantage? Here’s what you need to know.

Lean, Mean Micro-Fulfillment Machines

The key to q-commerce success is hyper-local micro-fulfillment centres, usually 200 to 400 square metres large, strategically situated in densely populated areas. Also known as “dark stores,” these micro-fulfillment centres are usually no more than three kilometres away.

Contrast this to the average Amazon warehouse, which is nearly 75,000 square metres. These are far too big to fit into the middle of somewhere like Toronto.

Further, while typical grocery stores have up to 60,000 SKUs, a q-commerce dark store generally holds between 2,000 to 4,000 SKUs. Amazon warehouses often carry more than 350 million SKUs. This efficient inventory size gives q-commerce the necessary agility to meet tight turnaround times.

Nonetheless, dark stores also manage to hold enough stock to eliminate the need for multiple pickup points, making q-commerce faster than pick-and-deliver services, where couriers drive to multiple stores, search for items, and then wait at the checkout.

Q-Commerce Technology

Q-commerce and eCommerce go hand in hand. Customers use eCommerce capabilities for the convenience of getting what they want from their devices without having to make the commute. Q-commerce simply pushed eCommerce into warp speed.

To maintain strategic inventory levels, q-commerce providers use intelligent software to identify demand patterns. This takes the guesswork out of inventory management, so unpopular items aren’t taking up space.

Couriers use dynamic route optimization to find the most efficient pathways. Meanwhile, smart tracking allows fleet managers to keep track of couriers, which is also attractive to consumers because they can track the delivery of their purchases in real-time.

Let’s Get You up to Speed

Looking to optimize your eCommerce or omnichannel capabilities? Marketsupport can help with website build-outs and management, delivery and curbside pickup order execution, online stock management, and more. Our ultra-competent professionals will have you executing at light speed!

To learn more, call 1-905-847-6513 or visit our new website.

« Back to Blog