Reality Check: LicketyShip

LicketyShip provides courier-service shipping. Its prices are comparable to, and often less than, companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHL. Basically, LicketyShip acts as a aggregator of multiple couriers: it’s researched couriers’ reputations and prices for you.

When you want to ship something, go to LicketyShip’s site to enter what you need delivered, where, and when, and it helps you select the best courier. Then you place an order with a credit card. You can even track your delivery just like with the big boys/girls.

Maybe you don’t have anything to ship right now, but from a purely marketing perspective, you should check out the company’s testimonial page featuring K&L Wine Merchants and the Los Angeles Times. Compare this to the usual bull shiitake that companies write to “prove” their worth. And you have to admit that the name is clever: “Lickety” for speed, “Ship” for what it does.

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Comments

[Margie Zable Fisher]

Hi Guy,

Great service. How do you find this stuff?

However, I beg to differ on the "testimonial" page. Those were actual pseudo case studies. Testimonials are written or at least appear to be written by actual clients.

Testimonials IMHO are the most important, underutilized public relations tactic.

Here are a few things that really strengthen testimonials:

1. A full contact name, location and company name

2. Specifics on the great stuff the vendor did for the client -- especially quantitative stuff -- such as "I saved 50% on my shipping costs last month" or "I got five new orders from clients who couldn't believe that I got their packages to them the same day"

3. Emotion and words that convey sincerity -- such as "these guys are the greatest thing since sliced bread" or "I can now feed my family something other than bread and water since we saved 50% on our shipping costs"

Anyway,
Love ya,
Margie

[Amit]

I completely agree with Guy, the name rocks but for the common man with limited knowledge and vocabulary, lickety may not mean much. However, I have a feeling that they could completely shake the shipping landscape with their same day shipping approach just like FedEx sparked a revolution in the shipping industry with overnight shipping.

[David Mackey]

Impressive. I like it in theory, will have to give it a try when I have something to ship...

[matt brezina]

K&L wines, LA times, but no mention of Xobni? They even put up a pretty picture of me ;)

-m

[Dennis Ray Nestor Jr.]

I found LicketyShip a couple of months ago they have a very interesting concept.

Here are two other Shipping companies that have Big growth potential:

http://www.uship.com

http://www.shipwire.com

[Andras @ Europe]

Hmmm... looks nice, and I like the clean, no-fuss, no-flash web design they use. However, unless I'm mistaken, this is yet another "US only" service :-(

[Jon]

I guess the name is better the Fluke (real name of a shipping company in Canada). Their motto is "If it gets there on time, it's a fluke" ;-)

Jon

[Grzegorz Daniluk]

Guy, if this service will allow you to send your autographed book to Europe for the price you pay for domestic delivery, then the company is worth something.

[Marc Duchesne]

@Mario : Technology never been a strategy at all. Technology is a mean to achieve some strategy. It's the way you use that technology which makes the difference and can help you achieve your goal.

[Mario]

Hello Guy,

Is the service you describe just for person without corporate accounts? Because for the general public it seems very transparent what they do. They get the prices online compare and give you the best plus a reasonable markup for them for this service.

For the corporate public, the case is more difficult because almost everyone has a different cost table.

What seems fascinating, it is the fact that achieving technological excellency of the services services of this sector has become a penalty, in the sense we this company is making money out of them.

This shows that Michael Porter is right when he says that technology is not a differential strategy per se.

Mario Ruiz

@ http://www.oursheet.com