Dusseldorf Entrepreneur Hasib Khan makes an ambitious promise: “A brick-and-mortar retailer only needs 60 minutes to go online with our entire range. We only need the article numbers and the prices, we’ll take care of the rest.” His start-up Bringoo takes care of the customers – and delivers the goods within 45 minutes. So far, Bringoo is active in seven German cities.
A consortium of eight retail entrepreneurs and digital experts has now joined Bringoo as part of a larger round of financing and is not only providing Khan with a mid-seven-digit sum for the expansion, but also specific retail cooperation projects.
Also present are Anna Weber and Jan Weischer, managing partners of the specialist retail chain BabyOne, Stefan Hamann, founder of the software company Shopware, Jost Wiebelhaus, owner of the “Frankfurter Laufshop”, digital expert Joel Kaczmarek as well as Konstantin Kirchfeld and Marcus Diekmann, the managing directors of the P&C subsidiary IB Company, which is responsible for the Düsseldorf retailer’s private label business.
However, fashion retailer Kirchfeld emphasizes: “We are not purely financial investors, but representatives of the sectors that can benefit from working with Bringoo, we bring experience and contacts to the partnership.”
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There are already concrete talks about bringing Bringoo together with BabyOne, Sport 2000 and the Hessian trade association, explains Marcus Diekmann, who coordinates the consortium of investors and is involved in several companies. “We will take a very close look at this for P&C’s own brands, such as Review,” announces Diekmann. “In the future, we want to deliver our own brands to customers as quickly as a pizza.”
Unique selling point compared to gorillas, Flink and Co.
There is a lot of competition in Germany on the market for fast delivery services. Investors have spent billions to set up start-ups like Gorillas, Flink, Knuspr or Bringmeister, which are snatching customers from each other in the big cities.
But Bringoo works differently. The competitors deliver from their own warehouses and are largely limited to food. Hasib Khan’s company, on the other hand, works with various stationary retailers and delivers directly from their branches.
The concept is similar to that of the US company Instacart. Instacart ships to 5,500 cities across the US, works with more than 300 retailers and had 2020 sales of $1.5 billion.
In an analysis, the e-commerce expert Matthias Schu from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts writes that with its platform idea, which “is partly based on the Instacart model that has already been tried and tested in the USA, Bringoo is pursuing an interesting approach that certainly has charming potential for success “. He assumes that by not having its own warehouse, Bringoo has a better chance of becoming profitable compared to the competition.
Bringoo has already convinced a number of well-known partners. In just over a year, the start-up was able to connect more than 100 branches from partners such as Rewe, Penny, Edeka and Hugendubel. The orders are received via the app, Bringoo employees pick up the goods in the branch and bring them to the customer by cargo bike or electric car.
Digital shopping mall for on-site retailers
The monthly turnover is in the six-figure range, but it’s growing steadily. Bringoo is financed by a delivery fee of between EUR 2.90 and EUR 4.90, which the end customer pays, and a share of the retailer’s turnover. The delivery radius is about five kilometers around the respective shop.
“We want to offer the local retailer a platform that is similar to a digital shopping mall. We deliver the customers to anyone who rents from us,” explains founder Khan. “We combine convenience and speed with the diverse dealer structure that exists in a city.”
Bringoo started in Hamburg, but now they also deliver in Cologne and Berlin, as well as in the smaller cities of Pinneberg, Hürth, Frechen and Brühl. Digitally savvy customers are migrating to online retail everywhere. Khan’s offer: “We want to give these customers back to retailers with a nice bow.”
Investor Marcus Diekmann sees Bringoo’s unique selling proposition here. “Everything revolves around the new food delivery services, but one thing nobody looks at: the stationary retail trade from fashion to household goods is in the middle of the city, but takes longer than Amazon to bring the goods to the customer’s home,” he marvels himself.
“Having delivered in two days is no longer top service from the customer’s point of view,” says Diekmann. In order to survive, retail must become like a pizza delivery service that delivers in less than an hour. “And it is precisely this vision that we can realize with Bringoo,” he is convinced.
Organized military transports in Afghanistan
The Bringoo founder gained initial experience in logistics in Afghanistan, where he organized the transport of goods for German, British and American troops. He later founded Udrive, the only car sharing provider in Dubai to date.
Khan recalls that his time in military logistics in particular shaped him. “We always joke that anyone who manages to get a 40-ton truck to its destination safely under fire in Afghanistan will also be able to deliver a bag of groceries in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 45 minutes.”
He founded Bringoo with two partners. Robert Kosobucki, who is responsible for sales, previously worked for the Flaschenpost delivery service and the DHL parcel company. Former Oracle manager Christian Puell is responsible for the technology.
Khan wants to offer retailers more than a delivery service. Bringoo also collects data that you can share with your partners. “What partners like Penny appreciate about us is the additional information we can give them,” he explains. “For example, we can see how many customers asked for an item that was sold out at a certain point in time.” This allows retailers to optimize their merchandise management and do more business in the future.
Investor Kirchfeld has already experienced the practical benefits of this. “I see that in Dubai, where I live: it already exists here and it works, here you can order everything from vacuum cleaners to socks and have them delivered to your home in 90 minutes,” he says. That ultimately convinced him to get involved with Bringoo.
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