Furniture Last Mile Delivery Challenges in E-commerce

When the topic of e-commerce is discussed, furniture hardly comes to mind. The industry experiences more of food items, clothings, electronics, and other basic lightweight products. However, online furniture sales is fast rising in the United States as it generated over 130 USD in 2021. Since then, online furniture sales have experienced immense growth with a 26.26% market penetration rate for 2023. 

With furniture e-commerce fast becoming a norm, there are some bottlenecks experienced by e-commerce brands. This is the area of furniture last mile delivery. Although there could be other challenges, this post is focused on the challenges of the last mile delivery in furniture e-commerce. 

Challenges

Fragility

Furniture items are pretty fragile. This is due to their composition materials, structure and general characteristics. Some examples include wooden furniture that are pretty vulnerable to damage. There are also furniture made of glass such as table tops, dinning tables, side stools, etc that can easily get broken while in transit. In all, most furniture materials are vulnerable to scratches, breakage when there is minimal impact or displacement. This is one of the major furniture delivery challenges. 

Size and Weight

Furniture items come in different weights and sizes. However, there are more of large sized and heavy weight furniture compared to the lightweight items. This creates a serious furniture shipping dilemma as the weight and size are a concern during loading and unloading. Large size and heavy weight increases the chances of accidents and damages such as cracks. 

Complex Design

Aside from the size and weight of furniture items, they widely come in several shapes and designs. Sometimes these designs may be irregular in shape making it difficult to fit several items into the truck. The designs of furniture items can be so complex that a scratch kills off the appeal and essence of the design. This results in extra care during handling and delivery. 

Rural Delivery

E-commerce furniture delivery challenges in rural areas are a serious issue. First off, basic delivery to rural areas has its unique challenges, then it worsens when delivering furniture of large sizes and heavy weights. There is limited infrastructure in rural areas such as easily navigable roads. The difficulty in navigating these roads, and driving through bumps and potholes will create too many impacts that may damage the furniture. 

The case may be worse in areas of rugged terrains and features such as hills and mountains. These areas may need specialized vehicles and intensive resources to deliver large furniture successfully. 

Turnaround Time

There is a significant gap between the ease of delivering a regular food item compared to furniture delivery. There are several complexities with the fulfillment of furniture which tend to affect the turnaround time. The furniture needs to be assembled which takes significant time and disrupts the customer’s desire for super-fast delivery. 

Another factor is the complexity of loading and unloading of the furniture onto trucks. This requires extra effort and resources and may take more time. Special equipment and trucks may be required in the case of delivery to less accessible or rugged areas. Putting all these measures in place takes time away from the usual fast delivery of other basic items. 

Assembly Requirement

Furniture assembly requirement is a significant factor in e-commerce delivery struggles. This issue is dissected into different aspects. One aspect is the diverse range of furniture products having different assembly requirements. The variation means that there is no standard assembly procedures, hence more know-how is required.

Now on the part of the customers, not all of them can assemble the furniture upon delivery. As a result, the e-commerce brand may need to send experts to assemble the furniture at the customer’s location. There are a lot of technicalities around furniture assembly that must be handled with care to avoid customer dissatisfaction. 

Urban Delivery

Urban delivery also poses its challenges just as the rural delivery. One issue with urban delivery is that the customer’s location may be far away from an assigned parking space. This means the furniture items will be unloaded and carried to the customer’s location. Furniture items are often heavy and can prove strenuous. 

Delivery time can be further delayed by traffic congestion in urban areas. This is a common issue with several urban road networks. 

Overcome These Challenges with DeliverThis

The challenges with furniture delivery can be overwhelming for e-commerce brands. However, working with a reliable regional carrier like DeliverThis can help combat these challenges. DeliverThis offers solutions to logistical and product specific challenges and with good knowledge of furniture logistics, there is so much you can gain. 

DeliverThis offers the following

• Special care and high-level handling of fragile furniture items at every delivery stage.
• Route optimization to handle the issues of traffic congestion, limited accessibility, etc. 
• On-time delivery that leads to customer satisfaction