What started out as a small personalized pick-up service that only iOS users could access, Shyp has announced that its app will now be available on Android as the company continues to expand nationally.
Shyp is a company that takes the guesswork of package weighing and shipping cost calculations away from the consumer and handles it themselves, as well as finding the most fiscally prudent way to ship an item. In a demonstration on TechCrunch that was published Jan. 29, the website shipped a copy of “Call of Duty” to a lucky listener of its GameCast podcast. To ship the game, a photo must be first taken of the item and sent using the app. Then, a roving “Hero” will get pinged, and will begin heading to the app user’s address to pick up the item. Since the “Heroes” are assigned specific zones within a city, the pickups take less than 20 minutes from order placement, sometimes even as little as five minutes. Once the package is received, the “Hero” confirms with the customer, and continues picking up as much as they can until it’s time to drop the packages off with a Shyp satellite vehicle to be taken to the warehouse for weighing and shipping. The items are measured by dimension and by weight, packaged, then sent using the cheapest possible courier. At this point, the consumer receives the full bill for using Shyp, which includes the shipping costs as well as a $5 pickup fee.
When asked why he didn’t release the Andorid app with the iOS app, Shyp CEO Kevin Gibbon explained how the business was built from the “ground up,” stressing the importance of taking it slow. This also explains why it was also only available in San Francisco upon launch in 2013, and has since moved on to Miami and New York City once the logistics of having a warehouse and zones for “Heroes” were worked out.
TechCrunch has also reported that Shyp will be available in Los Angeles “in the near future,” possibly early this year.
