Etsy To Try Same-Day, Next-Day Delivery In New York City

With Amazon’s new “Handmade” platform trying to nose into territory that has long been the domain of Etsy, the online crafts and vintage marketplace is taking a page from Amazon’s playbook and trying its hand at same-day and next-day delivery.

Re/code reports that the Brooklyn-based company has teamed up with delivery service Postmates — who are already working with Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Carvel, and Cinnabon, among others — for a service called Etsy ASAP, designed to cut down on the sometimes lengthy and/or vague delivery windows for Etsy customers.

When ASAP launches in the coming months, customers in parts of NYC serviced by Postmates will see when a for-sale item is eligible for the speedier delivery. It will be up to Etsy sellers to decide — on an item-by-item basis — whether to enable the ASAP option.

Customers will be able to track deliveries and choose a delivery window, but ASAP comes with a not-small price tag of $20.


UPDATE: A rep for Etsy has clarified that Etsy ASAP is currently only considered a “pilot” program and is slated to last through the holiday shopping season.

The company is pushing ASAP as something that both customers and sellers want.

“We hear from sellers that they get constant requests from buyers for getting stuff really fast,” an Etsy exec explains to Re/code. “They feel they are in a bind and actually it’s technologically almost impossible” to make expedited deliveries.

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