You must know Mercado Livre, and probably already bought or sold an item there. The online platform certainly brought a revolution in the market, by allowing anyone to advertise a product, centralizing the most random offers and demands, from cars to sticker collections. It didn't take long for real stores, offering products in large quantities and varieties, to be installed on the platform, given the window offered by the site.
If the virtual platform offers great convenience for making sales, the logistical challenges of physical delivery are still major obstacles. This is because business transactions can take place virtually, but it is still necessary to store products, manage stocks and deliver them to customers.
The Mercado Livre website has been using Mercado Envios for some time, in order to facilitate some procedures related to shipping. Now the company has announced that it will expand its operations in logistics, offering transport and storage services for products advertised on its website, from a CD in Louveira (SP). For now, the operation is restricted to a few customers, but there are plans to expand soon, with new facilities in Brazil.
This initiative is in addition to that of other companies in what has been called e-fulfillment, which, as the name implies, goes beyond e-commerce and completes the sales service. For some time, the Post Office, due to the end of e-SEDEX, presented Correios LOG, a service that also promises to carry out the complete logistical management of a seller, although it does not have a sales interface per se. Amazon also intends to offer a similar business (as described in the post by our colleague Alexandre Lobo, which the company has been doing for some time in other countries.
Figure 1 – Promotional image of Correios LOG, the company's e-fulfillment service
Source: Correios
Such services may represent a great opportunity for the development of internet commerce in Brazil, a sector that has been showing growth even in times of crisis. The use of structures and know-how of large logistics operators can reduce costs and facilitate the logistics administration of the business. Apparently, the competition will be strong and the new complete marketplaces will cause a big change in Brazilian commerce. This is just one of the great technological transformations coming to logistics. To learn about the latest innovations on the market, participate in the International Supply Chain Forum 2017, which will highlight innovation, startups and digital transformation in the supply chain.
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Fernando Chalréo
He has been working on consulting projects in Logistics and Supply Chain for 5 years, with experience in companies in the consumer goods, retail and food and beverage sectors. Types of projects already carried out: Sales & Operations Planning, Inventory Management, Network Planning, Business Process Review, Logistics Indicators and Transport Management
