Nimber arrives in the UK
Nimber is a Norwegian company that creates a marketplace with a person who wants a service going in the same direction, delivering packages, keys and credit cards at long or short distances. In Norway the company sees up to 80 requests for delivery from 68 deliverer's and the service has now officially launched in the UK. Prices are expected to be 20% lower than in Norway due to the denser population of London and rival Royal Mail Services due to its cheaper rates.
Driving across Norway to take part in a ski-jumping event, Knut Bjerke looked around his car and realised how much spare space he had.

“I thought about how much could be transported and would fit into these cars, saving the environment, reducing automotive and transport costs and ensuring rapid and precise deliveries,” said the Norwegian businessman. “As I thought more and more of this idea, I found many different scenarios which would benefit from such a service. Left keys, credit cards and passports – all things that could be easily brought on cars, vans, flights, trains and buses. But also larger items which may be more cost effective to transport than with traditional services.”

A decade later and Nimber, the company that grew from the idea, has just arrived in the UK. Essentially a marketplace to match a person who has something they want delivered with someone going in the same direction, the website allows people to post details of items – from packages to bikes, chairs and keychains – they want transported short or long distances. On the other side of the transaction are those travelling by foot, car or van in the same direction who agree to take the package and deliver it for a fee.

Still in its very early days, Nimber is the latest company to emerge from the sharing economy. The sharing concept is predicated on the notion that spare and unused capacity for resources such as cars and homes can be used by someone else. It follows, say economists, that this increases efficiency and lowers the price of those goods and services. Taxi drivers around the world don’t agree, with the Uber ride-sharing service drawing protests from France to China, but Nimber is adding to a global phenomenon. It joins the ranks of room-leasing site Airbnb and car-sharing business BlaBlaCar in changing how traditional services are operated, which in the case of Nimber is the very competitive area of package delivery.

Outlining the business model from the company’s UK offices near the London tech hub known as Silicon Roundabout, chief executive Ari Kestin says Nimber was overly complicated when it launched in 2010. It abandoned that version in favour of a simpler model which was then launched in Norway and arrived in the UK two months ago.

The service is divided into two, for those that want to send an item and “bringers” who can transport it. Senders are asked what they want to send, stating the pick-up point and destination and what the package will fit into (from a trouser pocket to a van), and then a price is suggested by the website based on aggregated figures from previous orders.

CEO Kestin in Nimber’s Silicon Roundabout offices. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Bringers have their regular journeys logged into the site, which then notifies them when a suitable candidate for a delivery comes up.

“What we try to solve is time, distance, size … equals price,” Kestin said. “We ask our bringers to tell us where they go. They are very habitual people in general. I will make a bet that 90% of the places that you go to are your office, your home, your family.”

In Norway, the company sees up to 80 requests for delivery go through the site every day – of which about 68 are met by bringers. The cost of transporting a guitar 440km across Norway comes in at £44, while to move a sofa 225km costs about £67, said Kestin. Still in their first few months in the UK, he said the company has overseen the delivery of about 100 items and expects the average prices that are charged to come in at about 20% less than in Norway, due to the denser population and lower cost of living.

Kestin believes that because many of the items that are sent are outsized, their prices are competitive with other transport options such as the Royal Mail. “It compares very well because normally the items are very bulky, they are awkward, they don’t fit the normal dimensions of the postal service,” he said. Nimber is also considering charging a premium for quick deliveries.

In a similar vein to other businesses that operate in the informal sharing economy, the personal contact between sender and bringer is key, said Kestin. “People trust people more than they trust companies. You do a handshake with the person, you don’t do a handshake with the company.” Although email, mobile phone and credit card details are taken off the bringers and they can be rated from one to five on their accounts, the system is not completely secure, he said. “I think there is never a situation where it is 100%, so for me to say that would be a fib.” Items are insured for loss or damage up to £500.

“If you are going to allow someone to stay in your home, you are probably going to allow someone to take a delivery for you,” Kestin said, referring to the Airbnb system. So far, 3,000 people have signed up on the site to bring packages in the UK. In Norway, most of the users are individuals who may be travelling from one side of the city or country to another and can take a package. The rest – which make up 60% of the deliveries – are either commercial operators such as delivery companies or a “man with a van” who have spare space in their vehicles, and people who travel for a living, such as salesmen.

But what if the system is used to transport drugs? It is the most frequent question asked of Kestin.

“You can give it to any delivery company right now. This is the number one question people ask – drug mules,” he said. “Getting back to stealing something, I wouldn’t advertise sending one million pounds in cash. In fact, if someone tried to do that, we would take it off because I don’t need that problem. But if you want to steal something, and I get back to trust, do you want to have all your information online? Do you want to show up with your face to pick something up? I suggest not.”



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