Managed delivery service expands cities, access

Doorman, a startup managed delivery service that provides consumers with a secure space to pickup online deliveries, is making itself more available.



First, Doorman has expanded its service to Chicago and will soon enter the New York market. Doorman, which launched in San Francisco in 2013, also operates in the Bay area. Doorman deviates from the usual package delivery model by operating warehouses where online retailers can rent dedicated space for consumers to pick up their deliveries.



Consumers can schedule deliveries seven days a week between 6 p.m. and midnight, and are notified when a package is available via mobile app. Doorman partners with most major delivery providers, such as UPS and FedEx, to accept packages for consumers.



In addition to operating in more cities, Doorman also recently partnered with August Smart Lock to securely accept home deliveries when nobody is home. August Smart Lock lets users provide one-time secure access keys to Doorman delivery personnel via a mobile app, and also see a log of everyone who uses the keys.



Doorman is taking the retailer-specific concept of online delivery lockers and expanding it to a general service that currently accepts deliveries from more than 3,000 deliveries. In a sense, Doorman is trying to become the Amazon Marketplace or Alibaba of secure online delivery, operating as a platform for other retailers.



Operating warehouses is not cheap, but eliminating the rest of the normal fulfillment infrastructure has worked well for many other third-party service providers in the retail space.