On-demand shipping company Shyp partners with EBay
SAN FRANCISCO — In another bid to make shipping a less annoying experience, Shyp announced a partnership with EBay on Tuesday that will give EBay sellers the option to send goods via its on-demand packing and mailing service.
The partnership, which lets EBay sellers choose Shyp as an option when they ship their items to buyers, is an important one for the San Francisco start-up, which relies on online sellers for the bulk of its shipments.
“I think it’s very important for us in the long term,” Shyp Chief Executive Kevin Gibbon said. “With these sellers, the number of shipments they do is a lot more than a consumer who is gifting, so it helps us in our drive toward profitability.”
EBay boasts 162 million active shoppers.
The partnership began in San Francisco, New York and Chicago in December, and the service will expand to Los Angeles this week.
The integration lets sellers connect their EBay and Shyp accounts, so when they open the Shyp app they will see an itemized list of recently sold items. They can then select the items they’d like to ship, and a Shyp courier will arrive at their door within 20 minutes to pick up their items and prepare them for postage. Shyp is waiving its pickup and packaging fees for EBay sellers through June 30. The company generally charges a $5 pickup and packaging fee on top of the cost of postage.
Although Gibbon declined to reveal the number of people who used the integration during the pilot period, he said the partnership has been a boon for EBay too. Nearly half of the EBay sellers who took advantage of the Shyp integration had never sold anything on EBay before, and many became repeat sellers.
Los Angeles is Shyp’s third-biggest market and is growing 20% month over month, Gibbon said. The No. 1 category of items being shipped is clothes, shoes and accessories, thanks to L.A. fashion stylists sending and selling clothing samples.
“One stylist in L.A. made $3,000 in two weeks just from selling the samples that none of her clients wanted,” said Johnny Brackett, Shyp’s head of communications. “It’s a very interesting side hustle.”
