NearSt to get books to customers within an hour

Meet NearSt, a new platform similar to Amazon offering one-hour delivery for books across London, as well as an opportunity to browse your local bookshops with your phone.

NearSt’s newly-launched platform allows customers in London to enter their postcode and the name of the book they’re looking for on the site or app. They can then order the book for instant collection from a local store, or have it speedily delivered. Guardian UK reported.

The start-up is “absolutely” out to challenge Amazon, co-founder Nick Brackenbury told Guardian in an interview.

“We think finding and buying something from a shop nearby should always be faster and easier than ordering it online. After all, there are hundreds of bookshops all over London, right on customers’ doorsteps. But today their inventory is invisible to shoppers’ smartphones, making an online retailer the easiest choice. With NearSt we’re changing that, by putting the incredible range and value of local shops within just a couple taps of someone’s smartphone.”

A bookshop owner, Andy Barr calls it “genius – kind of like Amazon without Amazon”.

“It’s a hybrid of online shopping with the high street. Whether customers are coming to the shop to collect or having the book delivered to them, it is making us known to people who did not know of our existence, and it is generating sales. It is selling books, and that is what bookshops are for,” he says.

The company is also preparing to open the platform up to third parties, such as book review websites, as well as developers. From the end of 2017, NearSt plans to move its service into other UK cities.

Read more on The Guardian

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