Swiss Post starts Kaloka, online marketplace for small businesses

Swiss Post has started in Bern an online marketplace for small businesses. This platform, called Kaloka, will take care of the entire ecommerce value chain, from online store to logistics. The postal service of Switzerland will also integrate local startups into the project and offers a SMS-butler.

In Switzerland, just as in many other countries, it’s not hard to set up an online store, but it’s a real struggle to run a successful one. Because if one wants to have a well-performing online store, a retailer must put many effort in the website, the marketing, the logistics, the customer service et cetera. And altogether that’s something many small entrepreneurs and business don’t have the resources or the expertise for. And those companies are the ones Swiss Post wants to help further.

Online marketplace Kaloka
That’s why it has launched in Berlin a new online marketplace, called Kaloka. At the moment there are about 45 companies from Bern which offer their products on the shared shopping platform. Consumers who place an order on this website before 13:00, can get their goods delivered to their homes at 16:00. And orders placed until 17:00 will be delivered by 20:00 the same day. This same-day delivery will be provided by the bicycle courier service of Swiss startup Notime. It’s also possible to order items the usual way by post or to collect the goods at the corresponding store. Kaloka also offers a service to consumers who don’t want to look for products themselves; its SMS shopping service suggest items for those people.

Same-day delivery test
In an official statement, Swiss Post says it started this new service both to test a new same-day delivery format in the Bern area, and to make its services available along the ecommerce value chain. “This allows small businesses to focus on their core business while we take care of, for example, the online shop, packing, and payment collection.”

Kaloka will run as a pilot project until 15 September this year. Swiss Post will then evaluate and decide if and how the project should be continued.