About BringBee

BringBee is a crowdsourced home delivery service for your shopping. Customers write their shopping list via one of our partner shops or a free text form online and get their shopping bought and delivered by another customer when and where they want it for a little reward. Because one BringBee does the shopping for two at the same time, customers help each other and avoid unnecessary shoppings trips and traffic in their neighborhoods. BringBee verifies all its members and shoppers, ensures a secure payment, allows easy communication via the platform, offers support and free transport insurance.

BringBee launched at the beginning of 2013 in a first pilot project in cooperation with IKEA Switzerland. In 2014 a number of regional small and medium enterprises, such as home accessoire or specialty shops and local micro-breweries joined in as partners.

Read the BringBee Brochure

Read more on our blog

It worked! And it worked great...

... just not often enough to make a living out of it...

Partner Shop Selection

IKEA Partner Shop

Example BringBee Job

Read interviews with Partner-Shops

Interview with the Burgdorfer Bier (de)

Interview with Sudwerk (de)

Interview with Soeder* (de)

Interview mit mintgreen (de)

We had some great customer feedback...

"In the everyday family hectic, BringBee is a real relief. With BringBee I don't have to go all the way to IKEA with my 2 children just to buy 2 or 3 practical articles."

Andrea, Zurich

"Great idea and well executed! We love the website and idea - congratulations! We even got the delivery on the same day! perfect :)"

Marc & Nathalie, Bern

"Usually, going to IKEA takes me half a day. With BringBee it now only takes a couple of clicks."

Gregor, Zürich

Read more interviews with BringBees

Interview with Elise Nardin

Interview with Katja Gräfenhain

Interview with Flurin Conradin

We had 2000+ BringBees in cities across Switzerland...

Thanks to our TOP BringBees

You are in luck if any of these people is your neighbor :)

We also want to say a HUGE thank you to Kristina Gajta, Julia von Stachelski, Marc Furrer, Cathrin Zgraggen, Lennart Opitz, Aishwarya Nagasureshbabu, Alex Pylaev, Xavier Charlet, Vukota Vucelic, Patric Chastonay, Markus Stocklin, Mirjam Villiger, Rui Manuel Ferreira Alves, Eveline Lichtensteiger, Steffen Volk, Martin Ernst, Raffaella Willmann, Germana Fiorini, Darko Milosevic, Martina Hauser, Désirée Scheidt, Christian Kiebele, Stevan Bukvic, Samuel Ebersold, Dominik Brun, Andrea Rehn, Adrian Allenspach, Ruedi Zogg, Stephanie Salomon, Reto Spicher, Stefanie Moser, Markus Lampart, Fabian Brändli, Stephan Coblitz, Martin Veit, Sarah Vogel, Pascal Meier, William Nüesch, Ursula Hungerbühler, Gabriel Bautista, Julia Sanchez, Patrick Osterwalder, David Bernet, David Schüeli, Shenojan Sathiyamohan, Janik Arnold, Stefano Scarpelli, Stefan Herrmann, Hans Fischer, Nevena Vucelic, Martin Halter, Joy Ackermann, Stella Schieffer, Pascal Fässli...

We had some great media coverage...

Lessons learned...

Bootstrapping

Rolling out a mass market product that requires ten thousands of transactions to ever break even is 'challenging' without a strategic investor or larger partner pushing for growth. Bootstrapping a B2C product was definitely very ambitious and slightly naive. The fact that all team members also had to work part-time to pay their rent, was not helpful to boost progress either.

Retail Partners

At first, we thought that big corporates could only benefit from BringBee as an inexpensive, social and environmentally friendly last mile delivery. However we absolutely underestimated the long sales cycles and convoluted decision processes. Oftentimes no or already-blocked budgets and the lack of product data and product pictures stopped the acquisition of new partners. Without a large retail partner, we lost the chance to leverage their existing marketing channels and customer base as a multiplicator.

Crowd

Using the crowd to get deliveries from A to B is a fascinating and intriguing idea. However with our "volunteering" crowdsourced BringBee base, we could never truly "guarantee" a delivery. It would make sense to implement professional fall back options to guarantee a certain level of customer happiness or to better indicate the likelihood of delivery during the order process.

The Future of Crowdlogistics

We still believe crowdlogistics has a chance in the future and it will eventually find its niche. Amazing future opportunities will include:

Crowdsource deliveries to remote areas

Save transport companies and couriers expensive trips to remote areas. Like that professional transport companies can avoid tours with low stop factors and empty detours.

Fast deliveries from the local store

With a large enough number of BringBees and sufficient channels to communicate new jobs to BringBees effecticely, i.e. poster and boards at retailers or an integration in navigation or public transport ticket purchasing apps, deliveries can be matched efficiently and quickly.

24/7/365

People move any time of the day: in the early morning, in the evening, at midnight, on Mondays, on Sundays and on holidays. People can deliver flexibly at any time.

Pioniere hinter BringBee

Stella Schieffer

CEO
Email: svschieffer@gmail.com
Twitter: @stellaschieffer
Linkedin

Shoaib Burq

CTO
Email: saburq@gmail.com
Twitter: @sabman
Linkedin

Dr. Kashif Rasul

Head of DevOps
Email: kashif.rasul@gmail.com
Twitter: @krasul

Philipp Oberender

CFO
Email: pwwoberender@gmail.com
Linkedin

We want to thank you!

Thank you for all the support, mentoring, help, open ears, fans, and feedback we received. We want to thank all of you for an amazing journey!

We also want to thank: Prof. Dr. Axhausen, dem Institut für Verkehrsplanung und Ruth Bertschi; unserem CTI Coach Christoph Heidelberger für viele Kaffees, Experten-Meetings und offene Ohren; den wundervollen Mentoren vom IFJ Jordi Montserrat und Beat Schillig, ohne die PolyPort gar nicht erst gegründet worden wäre; Freddy Christandl, der erste Pionier, der voll an unser Konzept geglaubt hat; Bublu Thakur Weigold für Unterstützung auf jede erdenkliche Art, Rat und Einladungen an die NetLop-Konferenzen; Thomas Klann für einen unerschütterlichen Glauben an BringBee und Einladungen zu Logistik-Fachgruppen bis hin zum Deutschen Verkehrsministerium; Andreas Schumann für Unterstützung bei der Bekanntmachung von innovativen Startups im Logistikbereich und die Einladung zum iKEP; Startups.ch und der AXA Winterthur für den AXA Innovation Award, ohne den die Firma vielleicht niemals gegründet worden wäre, Christoph Birkholz, Nils Rot und Michel Bachmann, die von Anfang an unser Startup im Impact HUB mitverfolgt und gefördert haben; Donat Matthews, David Affentranger, Amedeo Persico, Seija Mahler, Stefan Herrmann, Martin Halter, Johan Olzon, Isabella Schoepfer, Tania Schellenberg, Hans Fischer, Andrea Vock, Kevin Zimmerli, Mara Bonorand, Stefan Kyora, Holger Hoffmann-Riem, Peter Schild, Joseph Heaven, Tim Goodall, Flurin Conradin, Sandra Paradiso, Carlo Pisano, Markus Werz, Katja Gräfenhain, Jakob Kellenberg, Esther Brülhart, und vielen, vielen mehr...