Jay Bregman - eCourier

Few businesses track the economic fortunes of the City quite as accurately as eCourier. The high-tech business, which brought the speed and accuracy of the internet to the old-fashioned courier delivery service, can pinpoint the time a crucial football match starts – and ends – based on the volume of orders before kick-off and the dearth of orders during the match.

In the same way it is a perfect barometer for the recession. “We are seeing significant down-trading from existing clients,” says entrepreneur Jay Bregman, who founded the company in 2003 with Tom Allason. But instead of shying away from the fall-off in trade the company has used it to its advantage.

 It is flourishing even though times are tough and has put in place measures to ensure it trades through the economic downturn and is well placed to flourish when the upturn comes. “We shored up our balance sheet,” explains Bregman. “We raised debt facilities from RBS and did an invoice finance deal.”

The £1m line of finance with RBS Invoice Finance will support the company’s investment programme to continue improving service to its customer base. The eCourier website is being upgraded to enable more functionality to book online. And the company is well positioned to make acquisitions. 

eCourier has also financed a fleet of more than 40 eco-friendly vehicles. “It has prepared us for growth,” says Bregman. It has also put them streets ahead of their competitors by giving customers the peace of mind that they are reducing their carbon footprint but not compromising their ability to trade quickly.

The company has already made its mark in the previously inefficient world of courier services. Its website boasts an average delivery time of just 21 minutes. And annual sales have grown from £100,000 to £6m – all because Bregman and Allason took a fresh look at an established industry and re-engineered it using technology.

Neither of the founders had a background in IT. But Bregman, who came from New York to study for his masters’ degree at the LSE in London, had taken a course in entrepreneurship. Allason, who he already knew, was working as a stockbroker. Allason used to moan about how useless and unreliable the courier firms were that he had to deal with. When Bregman experienced this first hand they each decided there was a gap in the market. The final straw was when tickets to see the tennis at Queen’s didn’t arrive after a catalogue of disasters and they failed to make the tournament. “Everything went wrong,” says Bregman. “We started to think of a better way to do same day delivery.”

It was clear that the courier industry was made up of lots of small companies and there was no real use of technology. “We sketched out our idea, which was our vision for the ultimate same day courier company,” says Bregman.

It was built on simple foundations: everyone, from the client to the eCourier management team would know where the courier was at any one time by tracking them on the eCourier website.

Bregman found his niche and quickly realised he could build the IT platform that would work with the couriers who would use global positioning systems (GPS) technology instead of radios.

By September 2004 Bregman and Allason had funding in place from family, angel investors and a £100,000 Department of Trade and Industry guaranteed small firm’s loan. They set up their office in Shoreditch, just a short distance from the City of London.

All the drivers that eCourier uses are self-employed. And the company makes sure it wins the cream of the crop by enticing them with ‘better work, better jobs, better systems, and schedules’.

Since the eCourier service is offered to top notch clients, blue chips, and City institutions where there are such high expectations, Bregman says there was no way they wanted to get it wrong. “If something is important it is important to get it right,” he says. “There was no room for error.”

That philosophy continues to service eCourier well. As the economy started to falter the management team ensured it was looking to the future as well as concentrating on delivering an excellent service to current clients. “We embarked on an IT development project to upgrade and enhance our technology,” says Bregman.

Next on the agenda is moving from London to offer the eCourier service to other cities. Bregman says it was important from day one that they had a scalable business. Although there might be limited scope for the volume of business in other UK cities, the scope is endless overseas. “Our vision for the business is to consolidate the work of same day courier business,” says Bregman. With several months before they hit their official fifth birthday the company is well on its way.

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites