"2-Day is Too Slow": How Darkstore's FastAF is Delivering on the New Customer Expectation, feat. Lee Hnetika, Founder and CEO

Lee Hnetinka, Founder and CEO of FastAF joins the podcast to talk about how FastAF is not only revolutionizing delivery but also offering its members a thoughtful, curated selection of products as a fresh take on the DTC marketplace.

FastAF Now & 2021 Scaling

• FastAF is a two-hour delivery app to get premium essentials delivered, working with the likes of Aesop, Bala Bangles, and Vybes. FastAF is currently available in Los Angeles and New York.
• Currently, FastAF has micro-fulfilment centers to deliver their inventory from. In 2021, they’re planning on expanding cities and expanding geo-coverage within their existing cities.
• Lee launched Darkstore because of the lack of marketplaces for classic premium brands. There are marketplaces for groceries and basics, but not for premium products that customers have high affinities for.
• “These platforms were built for two-day delivery, not two-hour delivery.” - Lee Hnetinka on Shopify partnerships.
• “Two day is, not to be cliche, too old. It is not what is the norm today. Consumers have higher expectations of two hour or faster with food, with movies, with renting a home, getting a car at the tap of a button.” - Lee Hnetinka
• On marketplaces and DTC brands moving to Amazon: “That’s where we came in and said the brands of tomorrow are not going to sell on Amazon. They don’t want to because of competitive reasons. They don’t want to because they [wouldn’t] have a customer relationship with the customer… [We saw] that it was not in line with the values of today’s customer and today’s brands. So that’s where FastAF came in.” - Lee Hnetinka

Curation, Marketplaces, & Efficiency

• Happy Valley Tool is a tool built to pull Google Maps data and Uber drive data to pull gradients over maps so they know street-level statistics of where to build their next Darkstore.
• Consumers don’t really know what they want until they’re provided with it: “We needed to show to both brands and consumers what [two hour delivery] looks like in order to have them become believers.” - Lee Hnetinka
• Lee doesn’t see FastAF as a competitor of Amazon. “You can’t replicate the Amazon experience without billions of products. So we have to forge our own path.” - Phillip Jackson
• Because of its careful curation, FastAF is leading to consumers finding new brands, thus becoming a discovery platform.
• On launching FastAF virtually with social help through influencer marketing: “[If asked a few years ago], could you launch a city entirely virtual? I would tell you no, but I would tell you we did… it’s been the right decision.” - Lee Hnetinka
• After consumers are exposed to more efficient deliveries and services, reverting back to inefficient ways is unseeable.

Links

• Find the FastAF app!
• Check out Future Commerce Insiders #036: Freaky Friday

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