From hair salons to handymen at the tap of an app – taking on-demand services for a road test
Whether it's takeaways or hair salons or handymen, the rise of on-demand services has improved our lifestyles for the better, saving time, optimising our everyday workflow and helping to minimise stress.
Marketplaces have been launched across the spectrum of digital niche services, aggregating these verticals. As a co-founder of Booxscale, our vision is to bring all these marketplaces together into a single performance based-platform, and create the marketplace of marketplaces. I have hence made it my business to use most of the on-demand services out there, but not all. So in the lead up to Christmas, I set myself the challenge of using all the services available through Booxscale and reporting back on how they impacted my life.
Above being a really enjoyable experience, I must say that in many cases I also received offers for the first I used services, so most ended up being cheaper, faster and better quality than the alternative methods of getting the job done.
My on-demand adventure started with my pending flat move, so the first priority was to get onto BuzzMove to find a removal firm. After moving several times in my life, I can say this was a painless experience and the most professional I’ve encountered. I also needed to move my bed as the new flat was furnished, so I opted for AnyVan and managed to have the bed swapped over on the same day with no fuss at all. Now I just had to get my deposit back, so I downloaded the Hassle cleaning app and managed to get a good spruce of both apartments before moving into my new place.
Having moved from top floor to ground with a nice garden, I needed some tools. So a super friendly chap from TaskRabbit was dispatched to smarten up my garden in half a day.
This was all going too well. I bought myself a new hob in time for Christmas dinner parties, and found a gas engineer on Fixington to install it. The garden was looking so good that I decided to get a small patio put in with a fire for winter Christmas drinks and socialising, which was not a problem as Rated People provided a five-star carpenter that could start the very next day.
After all the moving and building, it was time to treat my mum and girlfriend to a massage – one each from Urban Massage and Uspahh, both getting good reviews.
Then it was time to try delivery meal boxes from Hello Fresh and Gousto. These were delicious, with no waste and fresh ingredients, and I am completely sold. With Christmas coming, I opted for a haircut with RockPamperScissors. My girlfriend had her works party on the horizon and chose to get Pritterly round to the apartment to do eight sets of nails and a few bottles of wine…
My marketplace challenge concluded just before Christmas and it was a healthy exercise to experience the apps and immersive technologies already in the market. 2017 will be buoyant and active within the marketplace space as more marketplaces are planned to launch, others will landed more VC funding to conquer their vertical niche and we will be activating a whole range of new partnerships. It looks likely to be a less demanding, more on-demanding year ahead.
Max Moore is chief executive of Booxscale