#solvingaproblem

vIn December 2014, I was traveling from San Francisco back home to spend christmas holidays with my family. Knowing that this winter was particularly colder than previous ones, I wanted to make sure that I have my winter clothes handy. The problem was my winter clothes box was at my good friend’s flat in NYC. I thought to myself, it’s easy, I’ll just have it shipped back to my parents home in not time.

I wrote “Ship box from Ramzi” on my to-do list. I gave myself 5 minutes to finalize shipment but I was faced with many hurdles. First of all, the courier websites are outdated. You cannot speak to them outside of office hours and weekends. There’s no phone number or email which you can reach out directly to.

The next day I allocated 15 minutes to complete the task. Again, I was faced with tedious hurdles like excessive data-input and poor user experience . I thought to myself that I am missing something and this process surely can be easier than this.

The day after that, I called my mother and asked her to take care of this because I was busy with work. She happily complied.

My dear mother tried to phone up a few couriers and none of them would make it easy for her over the phone. She had to physically go to a sales office of a local courier, pay, fill and sign papers. She had to receive a form on her email, which then she forwarded to me to forward to my friend to enclose with the shipment once it’s collected.

Also, the weight, if different, meant that the service would be compromised. As a result, she paid for extra weight, which is non-refundable by the way.

I was astounded. Shipping something should not be this hard.

During that trip back home, I met with a friend whom I knew for years. He had known of shipping solutions in the UK which he wanted to launch in the MENA region to make shipping cheaper and easier. We found instant alignment to work on this together.

We launched a service for consumers & small businesses to book instant discounted shipping services to be picked up from their house or office 24/7, from the UAE to anywhere in the world.