WINNIPEG — With the holiday shopping season in full swing, a new same-day on-demand local delivery service has launched in Winnipeg, catering to online and bricks and mortar businesses.
Trexity has chosen the Manitoba capital as its third operating city in Canada, following Toronto and Ottawa.
The company was founded in 2019 by former Shopify executive Alok Ahuja and LaunchFort co-founders Mathieu Bouchard and Darren Schnare.
“Trexity is committed to providing a concierge-level delivery service for all the small and medium-sized merchants in Winnipeg,” says Ahuja, the company’s co-founder and CEO.
“The urgency of shopping locally today is heightened. Winnipeg shoppers expect their favourite merchants to provide an easy and convenient shopping experience as well as have the ability to deliver their purchases immediately. This is about local helping local.”
Trexity allows merchants to offer real-time delivery to their local customers via a fleet of independent contract drivers — rivalling Amazon’s two-day Prime delivery. Drivers earn between $25 to $30 per hour, which is a considerably high compensation rate in the industry.
“Even though a shop might be local, when ordering online the playing field is levelled as it’s still a two-three day delivery, so that advantage of locality is taken away,” says Jay Myers, co-founder and VP of growth at Bold Commerce.
“But with a service like Trexity, it shifts that strength back to the local merchant as they can offer delivery within hours. What we’ve noticed at Bold is that a lot of local shops actually have no ambition of shipping internationally, they truly just want to serve the local market. Despite being local, in digital sales, they still lose to large brands distanced far away as their local proximity is no advantage.”
Myers compares the service to Uber or SkipTheDishes, but for eCommerce deliveries.
“If a customer selects the Trexity option, the cost is calculated real-time based on address, and a Trexity driver picks up the package right away and delivers it within hours.”
Merchants pay a flat rate to have their items delivered to a customer’s door, ranging from $6 for a bundled delivery to $17 for a single package. The exact costs are calculated once the specifics are entered during the checkout process.
Trexity’s expansion plans include the Calgary, Edmonton and Halifax markets in the coming months.
