It’s no secret that I’m a fan of crowdsourced delivery. Travel is expensive, and even if you use miles for the flights and home exchange for lodging there are still other expenses that are part of enjoying the trip. While the sharing economy does help make travel cheap, it’s hard to turn travel into a source of income. Peer to peer delivery companies could change this. If you want to buy something that’s only available, or much cheaper, in another country, you can save a lot of money on shipping by using travelers to deliver your purchase. And if you are a traveler you can earn some extra cash by filling up empty space in your luggage with deliveries to folks who live in your destination. I had a great experience with this in Spain and a failed attempt in Malaysia.
Recently I came across StuffInBag, another new entrant in this sharing economy delivery services market. Based in Tokyo they are focused on the Japan to Brazil delivery market initially. I talked to one of the founders, Diego Utiyama, about the StuffInBag business model and the future of crowdsourced delivery.
ShareTraveler: You call StuffInBag a collaborative logistics platform. I like that term but it might need a bit of explaining. Can you talk about what this means?
Diego Utiyama: Stuffinbag connects individuals travelling abroad with those who would like to receive any product from another country. We have a C2C business model, which means that people can interact freely within our platform, negotiate prices and delivery terms exactly as they would do in an offline environment. We allow individuals to acquire any product from overseas and also interact with people from all over the world.
ST: How do you differentiate from other crowdsourced delivery companies?
Diego: I believe that our business model is unique and is definitely the safest among all the players in our field. At Stuffinbag all the financial transactions are processed by our system which ensures that all the payments are made upon delivery, we also protect our users personal information in a way that Stuffers and Baggers only get to know each other once they have an official agreement through our platform. Stuffinbag is a serious business for serious people that really believe and understand the benefits of the sharing economy. Our commission structure is also very simple and transparent, 7% from the total amount of any transaction made through our system.
ST: You and your co-founder are expats living in Japan. Did this play a role in your desire to found a company for peer to peer delivery?
Diego: Definitely, I have been in Japan since I was 9 years old and my Co-Founder Rogerio has been here for quite a long time as well. During this period we have seen thousands of people going back and forth to Brazil and other countries. I personally like to travel a lot and every time I announce my trips some relatives or friends used to request products from Japan. Just for you to have an idea, a PS4 in Japan costs around $400, in Brazil the same product cannot be found for less than $1500, that is a huge difference and at the same time an incredible opportunity for us to explore.
ST: How much money do travelers make off of typical deliveries?
Diego: For some products the price difference between country of origin and country of destination is so big that travellers can still make a good cash even transporting small products. I would say that the average profit for the traveler stays around $70 but we did see people cashing $100 just to transport a pair of sports shoes.
ST: Some of your requestors specify which country they want to get something from. Is that flexible? For instance, if someone is requesting an iPhone 6 from Japan and I can get the same product from the United States, should I try to contact them and offer to deliver it?
Diego: Sure, you should try. Actually, the fact that Stuffinbag usually guides the users to select specific countries is because this way our algorithms can make most accurate matches between Stuffers and Baggers.
For each request up to 5 countries can be selected, but users are free to negotiate with people offering the same product even if the person is flying from a different country from the ones initially selected, we strongly encourage it and reinforce that our ultimate goal is to help our users getting the best products for the cheapest price and within the shortest amount of time.
ST: Stuff In Bag was just founded in 2014 and so far you have done a lot of legal research on regulations around importing things into Brazil. Do you have plans to expand your research to other countries and make a push for more users elsewhere?
Diego: As Brazilians living in Japan we felt that we could explore this niche as a first strategy, fortunately it really worked very well and now we feel that it is time to expand our business to other communities in Japan and also other countries. In order to do so we are investing a lot of time in research and benchmark in order to identify potential niches. We do have an established entity in Japan that respects all the regulations as a service provider, but since Stuffinbag is a cross-boarder platform, we strongly recommend our travellers to also make their own research before transporting any item to another country in order to avoid any issue.
ST: What parts of the world will you focus on in the coming year to expand your solicitors and travelers?
Diego: This year we are already taking the first steps to expand our business to APAC, currently we have a representative in Singapore, and based on the results we had so far we believe that there are great opportunities to explore in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and China. More than focusing on countries I would say that we are pretty much a community focused platform, which means that we have been supporting the Brazilian community in Japan and people in Brazil that want products from Japan so far. Maybe now we should start focusing on supporting the Filipino community in Japan and people in the Philippines that want products from Japan. For us, every country has several different opportunities and we want to expand our business to all over the world.
ST: I personally love this concept of travelers delivering things but it’s been difficult for me to find many things to deliver on my trips. Do you have ideas about how we can expand the use of these systems more broadly?
Diego: I agree with you, actually sometimes people just do not know what to request or from where they could get that product. That is the reason why we have been working on several improvements in our algorithms in order to have a better understanding about our users based on their behaviours within our platform. This way we will be able to help the travellers on finding products to deliver and also to help the Stuffers on finding travellers to bring their products. We are also working on some partnerships to increase the pool of products that we can suggest to our users, which means that in a really near future we will be able to connect travellers and requesters and also tell them where to find the cheapest and best product among several different merchants.