“We want to offer people a smart home delivery box that is always at their home waiting for all packages, food and goods sent from one friend to another to be delivered contact-free to that smart box,” Andres Sampka, one of ParcelSea founders, said.
Sampka presented the results of a study predicting that by the year 2023, 23% of all the purchases made in the retail sector are made online. This means that every 4th purchase will be made online.
ParcelSea’s solution is available for everyone and integration-free. The courier comes and chooses the appropriate section for the package or grocery bag, locks the door and that’s it. The courier does not need an app or a PIN-code for this. When the terminal is locked, the owner receives a text message, goes to the terminal, enters the code and takes out the goods.
ParcelSea
ParcelSea’s founders Andres Sampka and Indrek Jürgenson met in 2017 while working at Cleveron. Sampka says that it was a coincidence that they founded their own enterprise together because, at one point, they both felt that it was time to move on. The men had a lot of motivation and they decided to get things moving. They started with product development in the summer of 2020 and in the early phase they met with many people and courier enterprises to confirm the existence of the issue and the necessity of the product.
In a home garage in Viimsi, a few prototypes were built; one of which stands in front of Jürgenson’s house right now and is successfully in use.
ParcelSea’s strategy is to pilot the product in Estonia. Their clear aim is to build the business up in their home country and, from there, move towards Scandinavia. Sampka notes that there are altogether around 6.6 million private houses in Estonia and Scandinavia together. “We are trying to get a little piece of that,” he says, “we expect 5% of the market in the next two years.”
They both acknowledged that there is a tempting market in the US, where both the issue and the private house owners who have the resources to purchase their product exist; however, in order to enter this market, they have to prepare themselves legally and in other ways.
By the end of January, the first 20 house owners will get their smart home delivery boxes and based on their feedback, improvements will be made to future products.
In the future, besides accepting, customers are able to ship parcels with the mailbox, meaning that a customer can put parcels in the terminal and the courier will come and deliver it to the addressee.
Read the original article on DigiPro here (in Estonian).
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