Case Study Of The Online Marketplace Shiply Essay

Case Study Of The Online Marketplace Shiply Essay In the world of competitive Internet businesses, even the field of items’ shipment has moved online, and quite successfully, as the success story of a UK-based Internet service Shiply suggests. This transport company headquartered in London came to existence in 2008 and quickly gained popularity among both service users and vendors due to its new format of service delivery. Despite the UK-based location of the business, Shiply has quickly spread its operation to neighboring countries and now successfully caters for the transportation and shipment needs of residents in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Brazil. It has also opened new facilities in Italy and Russia, furthering the expansion of its scope at present (Shiply, 2017). At present, the company is proud to have over one million registered users and over 70 thousand transportation companies vending their services at the company’s site. Since the moment of its creation, Shiply already processed over 2 million quote requests and constantly offers shipping projects and tasks for over 200 million pounds’ worth. Moreover, an additional benefit provided by Shiply is spare capacity offer (e.g., lorries and vans) that it applies to save miles for the users; by now, this new technique allowed the company to assist its users in saving over 70 million miles, which is an indisputable contribution to its corporate reputation and rising market popularity (Funderbeam, 2017). The very approach of Shiply to transportation contributed to its stable popularity among customers and vendors alike; it was considered very wise to unite individuals who need to ship some goods to a certain location and delivery companies already planning such a route with some spare space. In this way, Shiply managed to help people save unnecessary and costly extra miles, while at the same time producing a sizeable impact on the CO2 footprint reduction of the overall transportation industry. Its founder, Robert Matthams, was initially focused on the potential environmental benefit his start-up could bring, so at present, working with Shiply has numerous benefits for all participants. Users get a highly competitive price for shipment of their items, well below the market offers’ average, while vendors have an opportunity to fill their transport fully with shipped goods, thus maximizing their profit from every route. Furthermore, such optimization of the shipment process benefits t he countries’ ecology by reducing carbon emissions from unnecessary, redundant travels (Is4Profit Team, 2010). However, one should note that Shiply has already been involved in a serious legal dispute by another transport marketplace, uShip, which sued the latter for violation of the trademark and copyright law. As the uShip authorities claimed, Shiply borrowed major elements of their site and logo design, representing a grave legal violation, especially given that both companies function in the same business sector (Blog Transport, 2011). The case was settled in 2011 with Shiply agreeing to redesign the site and changing the key elements of a logo to remove resemblance. Overall, one should note that besides a dreadful incident with uShip involving some trademark and copyright violations, Shiply has established a strong positive reputation of a user-friendly, cost-effective, and ecologically conscious company. It fits the needs of contemporary users who spend the majority of their time online, keeps the pricing for shipment quite low, and at the same time allows vendors to fill their lorries and vans with shipped items for profitability and stable revenue. The online bidding system for each project enables companies to compete for users openly, while the latter receive a chance to save decent costs on moving items from one location to another one. Given the financial statistics of Shiply and tempos of its growth, it is possible to predict its further stable growth and improvement of its competitive position in the UK and global marketplace.