Postmates, the on-demand delivery startup, will soon enable businesses to offer same-day delivery through their apps and websites with the launch of its Postmates API.
The company announced the new delivery infrastructure at an event today in San Francisco.
Through the Postmates API that companies can implement into their websites and apps, the delivery company will provide couriers to the businesses who want to ship their products to local customers in mere hours. Postmates can also operate as a go-between for companies that need to run products between multiple warehouses.
Postmates allows customers to order anything from local companies—literally anything, from lunch to office supplies—through their website and mobile application, and have couriers pick it up and deliver it to a customer’s doorstep. Now, people can order directly from the businesses.
Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann said that one company, Mission Bicycle in San Francisco, used Postmates to shuttle bike frames and other materials to and from it’s different locations, and freed up time for its employees to work on products instead of running errands.
Postmates has grown tremendously in the last two years—today, Bastian said Postmates has made one million deliveries. Additionally, 36,000 restaurants now use Postmates to deliver their products, and the company now has over 6,000 “Postmates,” or couriers delivering goods.
The company tested its new API with clothing company Everlane, which offers Everlane Now, Postmates-powered delivery in San Francisco and New York. Same-day delivery of Everlane products now accounts for half the total orders in New York, just 10 days after launching.
The Postmates API is launching with six partners, including women’s clothing resaler Threadflip and apparel startup Betabrand, and will expand quickly in the future. The company will offer $100,000 in delivery credits to startups built on top of the Postmates platform.
Postmates is available in 18 large markets including the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Photo via williamhook/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) | Remix by Fernando Alfonso III
