Local Internet courier pushing for acceptance
Published:Friday | November 16, 2018 | 12:00 AMCarlene Davis
Many business analysts predict that the future of retail shopping is online, and entrepreneur Gavin Lindsay is ensuring that Jamaicans are moving with the times by creating a new online freight-forwarding company.
Lindsay's company, Internet Package Courier Jamaica (IP Courier Ja), promises to deliver packages from the United States to your doorsteps in two to four days.
"What we afford our customers the opportunity of doing is to shop on Amazon and other websites that do shipping to America and not Jamaica. Our customers can use our Amazon Prime account and our credit cards or our PayPal account free of charge if they don't have one.
"The difference between our services and others is we don't have a brick-and-mortar system so we are the first online system company that brings goods into Jamaica," said Lindsay, who is a Young Leaders of the Americas Fellow.
He said the company was launched in May and already has over 1,000 customers signed up.
"We are leveraging technology by giving live tracking of the items so you can sit at home and watch the items being delivered to you. Also, when you use our credit card you do not need to leave your house, all you need to do is send us a link to the item and once you transfer the money we do the purchase for you right then and there. So the convenience is there from your home and as it gets here we deliver it straight to you free of charge," said Lindsay.
IP Couriers Ja ships to Jamaica twice per week and deliver in hand on Tuesdays and Saturdays in the Corporate Area, Spanish Town and Portmore, St Catherine, free of cost. For the rest of the island, a delivery rate of $500 for packages up to 10 pounds is charged.
Lindsay noted that despite the convenience which IP Courier Ja offers, there are some Jamaicans who are hesitant to use its service because it does not have a physical store where persons can collect their packages.
"But the irony of it is that you buy from Amazon with vendors from China and all over the world, you pay your money to them before you even get the goods and you don't know them, yet still I am local and they are giving me a bigger scrutiny then someone who is from wherever in the world," said Lindsay.
He argued that despite the absence of a physical store, he is always accessible to his customers.
"We respond to our customers within seconds, and any problem you have we want to feel as if we are a companion that is easily accessible right around the clock. We want persons to know that the technology is changing and we are working with the times. Try us and the only risk they will face is that they won't leave us," declared Lindsay.