As Amazon continues to expand its retail muscle beyond its own e-commerce portal, there’s been some activity among startups and businesses hoping to develop systems that can help others compete better with it. Deliv, a “crowdsourced” same-day delivery startup that currently partners with some 4,000 retailers to help them offer same-day delivery services to rival those of Amazon, today announced that it has expanded its service to 33 markets and 1,400 cities, up from 19 markets previously.
This is a notable market expansion: Deliv says that is now covers a footprint the same size as Prime Now, the same-day delivery service that Amazon provides to its Prime subscribers, one of the bigger selling points for people signing on to Prime and buying from Amazon.
A lot of retailers today sell items through Amazon’s marketplace: it’s a one-stop-shop for them, giving the option of connecting with consumers on Amazon’s platform, as well as using the e-commerce giant’s fulfilment and logistics infrastructure to store, distribute and deliver those purchased goods — with a cut going to Amazon for the privilege, of course.
But Amazon itself has been driving hard to build out its own retailing operations, in categories like fashion and electronics, as well as fresh food (which got a huge boost this week with the close of its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods). And Amazon is a formidable competitor: the company is huge and has the kind of fearlessness that comes with scale, discounting goods and services like delivery heavily to gain market share.
That presents a sizeable competitive threat to other retailers,…