Image via CrunchBase
Urbanites, who yearn for instant gratification of all wants, from gum to a gourmet dinner, love services who promise to delivery just about anything available locally in about a hour. Urbanfetch, a now defunct start up in New York and London at the turn of the century, burned through $70 million and numerous employee dreams trying to make such a service happen, as did Webvan in a more spectacular manner (although Amazon now owns what's left of the business and is apparently making money).
Now we have shutl giving a similar model a go in London. The offering is actually an on-line delivery platform that aggregates transportation carriers so they can deliver from a retailer to a customer in an hour. Hummingbird Ventures and some angels recently invested $1 million in the start up. shutl's web site lists numerous retailers, including Argos, Huggles and Oasis as clients for the service. They also have real-time customer feedback on the homepage, a brave act for a small company.
shutl's founder, Tom Allason, was also the founder of a London courier service, eCourier, so the new service has its routes in a successful urban delivery operation (and competitor).
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