Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s Adding Same-Day Delivery

Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s plan to test same-day delivery for products purchased on their websites, parent company Macy’s Inc. announced Monday, joining the growing ranks of retailers trying to compete with superfast delivery options offered by e-commerce sites like Amazon.com.

The same-day-delivery pilot program will launch this fall in eight Macy’s markets and four Bloomingdale’s markets. Fifty stores will be involved, serving as fulfillment centers.

The service will be powered by Deliv, a Silicon Valley-based startup that uses crowdsourced drivers to pick up orders from local stores and deliver them. The maximum delivery distance is 15 miles.

The announcement comes two months after the nation’s major mall operators — General Growth, Simon, Macerich and Westfield — announced same-day delivery services at some of their malls, also using Deliv. The mall programs offer same-day delivery for in-store purchases when shoppers don’t want to carry around bags, as well as for online purchases from select mall retailers that have opted in, at a fee of around $5.

Monday’s announcement from Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s means shoppers on the retailers’ websites or web-enabled mobile apps will see a same-day delivery option at checkout. The pricing has not yet been announced, but it will be “very market competitive,” said Daphne Carmeli, founder and CEO of Deliv.

Though only products available locally will be available for same-day delivery, Carmeli said Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s already have made inventory adjustments thanks to their buy-online-pick-up-in-store offerings.

“These are really our crown jewels,” Carmeli, who launched Deliv in 2012, said of her new clients. “We want to be in the websites of all the major retailers.”

Deliv, which has $12.5 million in funding, last month announced a same-day delivery partnership with Foot Locker.

The markets where Macy’s will be offering same-day delivery are Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New Jersey, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Bloomingdale’s will offer same-day delivery in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose, Calif.

This article appeared in print in the September 16th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.