Every time FedEx or UPS knocks at your door and you aren’t there to receive a package, the courier loses money.

UPS is a company that has famously scrutinized every single tiny facet of the delivery process, looking for any way they can to save a second or two of their drivers’ time. So, obviously, one thing they’d really like is to make one stop for every package.

A new startup makes that possible for parts of Brooklyn. GoLocker sets up secure lockers in local businesses. Packages are sent to the GoLocker office and its staff loads them into the lockers, notifying customers when their package has arrived. Then customers can go pick up their packages from the secure locker at their convenience.

Nigel Thomas, the company’s founder, worked for years in the logistics industry and saw that lockers were widely used in Germany. “So I thought, why is no one doing in the U.S.?” he told us in a phone call.

By then, Amazon had started using them, but only for Amazon products, so Thomas saw an opportunity. His first two sets of lockers went up in convenience stores in Fort Greene and Park Slope, with more on the way soon. Store owners get paid for the space the lockers use, but they also see value, Thomas says, in encouraging repeat business. It’s one way a bodega can distinguish itself from other nearby businesses in the same space.


“Right now we’re starting off as parcel delivery,” Thomas said. For now, deliveries are also being made to GoLocker’s office and its staff are delivering them to the lockers. In time, Thomas hopes to establish partnerships with couriers such that they can delivery directly to the locker, guaranteeing those companies just one stop for those packages.

Parcels are not the only use case Thomas sees, though.

Eventually, the plan is to make it possible for a person to rent a locker to store their bag for the evening when they go out for a night on the town after work. Or to facilitate the sale of stuff via Craigslist transactions. Or to return borrowed stuff when you and a friend are having a hard time matching schedules. Those use cases are built into the existing software, Thomas told us, but they’ve yet to be enabled. (Of course, they also present the potential problem of facilitating illegal activity.)

Pricing starts at $1.99 per delivery. It solves the same problem as local company Parcel, but in a slightly different way. At $1.99, it costs less than Parcel and it might work better for people with erratic schedules, but it’s also limited to people who live nearby a set of lockers.

In 2015, Thomas hopes to deploy 20-30 machines around Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, and reach 5,000 users. GoLocker is a self-funded team of six.

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