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Home delivery available to Polaris shoppers through CbusShops
Sarah Sole
ThisWeek group
It was December, and Jack Hendrix was working in retail, filling an online purchase that was to be picked up in the store.
If the product is here, that means the customer is pretty close by, he reasoned. In that case, why couldn't the product be delivered to the customer?
In September, Hendrix made his delivery vision a reality at Polaris Fashion Place.
The 21-year-old Columbus resident and founder of CbusShops is partnering with the shopping mall to deliver free, same-day home delivery to customers who buy online from Polaris stores.
The delivery service is available to anyone who lives within 20 miles of the shopping center, Hendrix said. That radius would include downtown Columbus and most central Ohio suburbs north of Interstate 70.
To participate, customers need to first purchase from a Polaris store and choose the option for in-store pickup, Hendrix said. Customers then would take a screenshot of their purchase confirmation email and upload it to cbusshops.com to have their purchase delivered to their homes, he said.
Orders sent by 3 p.m. are guaranteed same-day delivery, and those sent after 3 p.m. could be sent the following day, Hendrix said.
Hendrix said Polaris is CbusShops' first partner, and he is looking to partner with other shopping malls soon.
When he was coming up with his business model, Hendrix said, he wanted to provide same-day delivery for every retailer in Columbus. He soon realized that would be an impossibility and a logistical nightmare. The key, he said, was to use shopping malls as a distribution center of sorts to simplify logistics and provide the service more affordably.
Development of his business development predated the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, he said, but the pandemic gave him a few extra months to work out his model before launching it.
Now he works with his father, Mike, who serves as chief growth officer.
"It's been great," he said. "We've seen awesome growth. We're really excited about that."
Mary Dimitrijeska, marketing director for Polaris Fashion Place, said Hendrix reached out to Polaris about the partnership. The mall just was starting to offer parking-lot delivery to customers, she said.
"It made sense here," she said.
Dimitrijeska said retailers like the partnership because when customers use CbusShops, the transaction is credited as an in-store purchase. Stores often have their own sales goals, she said.
"The tenants love it," she said.
ssole@thisweeknews.com
@ThisWeekSarah
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