A digital delivery platform with toktoktok.com

The Toktoktok start-up was launched in 2011 with the aim of controlling the last mile between consumers and retailers. In legal terms, it positions itself as the customer’s agent.

To meet the users’ needs, Toktoktok relies on a network of partner retail chains like Monoprix, Les Galeries Lafayette, Yves Rocher, Micromania, Darty, pharmacies, florists… and a network of couriers (called runners for the users).
To order, you just sign up on the toktoktok.com site then place your orders as and when the fancy takes you. After ordering, the customer can modify the order until such time as the runner has made the purchase in store. Customers can track the runner’s progress on the site’s Google Map in real time.
The runner collects the products from the store then pays for the purchases in partner stores with a prepaid card.
The start-up makes money as an acquisition agent with partner retailers and bills the final customers for the service. The price of a 1-hour delivery starts at €5 per order, depending on the products and the waiting time in store.
Toktoktok wishes to expand in London too during the course of 2014.

As announced at the Retail’s Big Show 2014 by Forrester, the battle of the last mile has only just begun! Toktoktok brands itself as a digital agent, after the fashion of a player like eBay in San Francisco and New York, which is testing a 1-hour delivery service for online orders in stores in the vicinity.

In this age of omni-channel consumption, such a service interlinks all channels, combining online and offline in real time. Ebay or Amazon have thus decided to break into the local delivery market to embody their physical presence near the end consumer. For the sellers on their marketplace, they thus add a valuable last-mile delivery service.

The odds are that after click-and-collect, the 1-hour delivery (or concierge) service will become the new standards of tomorrow’s retailing. Will Ebay or Amazon be the ideal “caretakers“ of the connected consumer?