A Global Consumer App
Stork
It’s an idea that everyone has tried to solve before. In an age where everything is accessible, how come it is still difficult to be able to receive any product from around the world?
Stork’s mission was to make global, local with one product and person at a time. They aim to build a peer-to-peer courier system, somewhat of a modern, digital silk road. Their unique perspective of an altruistic traveling community was at the heart of the venture.
Why most wouldn’t take on the challenge
Most attempts to create this global storefront concentrated on pre-orders or secondary markets highly prone to mark-ups. Without curation of the community, the transaction leaned more to a nightmare scenario than a successful delivery.
Also, the ticket cycle is just too risky. Even with great levels of platform support, a bad experience could result in being stopped by customs, a very expensive fee, and potential legal ramification. This is a hard sell for the supply side of the business.
Penetrating Niche Facebook and Travel Communities
We focused on the segment of short/long term travelers that built a specific global palette and/or had a sentiment to a region. We landed on the digital nomad community. Our second segment was immigrants and expats. Those who had relocated and immersed themselves into a new society but craved the products of a past home.
We found that both the digital nomad and immigrant did a manual process of “bundle buying”. Rather than request a single product, they would use weight as an anchor for their request. This insight unlocked a completely different buying behavior than originally hypothesized.
Once it was known someone was traveling to the country and it was someone that was vetted by the community, the requester (patron) would be more than happy to de-risk the process by fronting all the money for the products and be attentive to help guide the courier (stork) with any potential purchasing hurdles.
Building Trust, Accountability, and Shaping Altruism
Simply by answering “who owns” the item at what part of the process created a foundational accountability needed to even begin the transaction flow. This built trust that evolved with each step further into the transaction process as it inherently got riskier.
We created a bidding system. Users had the ability to counter in certain fields of how it should be retrieved, quantity of items, and overall service costs matching the effort of the purchase. Other centralized features included a time sensitive, 24-hour response window and order editing capabilities. This shaped communication, price adjustments, as well as gave room to further incentivize the courier.
Trust and Integrity above all else
The founding team knew branding couldn’t just be a logo or interface; it represented their altruistic leadership. Most travel brands often glamorize cultures through a wanderlust lens. It is shown to the recipient and described as exotic, which inherently is divisive language.
In order to build a truly inclusive community, Stork knew it had to champion the underserved, going beyond the traditional culture of food, dance and product. It had to be centered around people. It had to advocate for the cultural shapers, the community decision-makers, and honor the historically unsung pioneers.
There was no room for a lack of authenticity, and no tolerance for a lack of integrity.
