Mercari announces nationwide delivery partnership with Uber

John Lagerling, Mercari U.S. CEO joined Yahoo Finance Live to break down their new nationwide partnership with Uber.

Video transcript

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- Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. We are roughly 15 minutes to the closing bell. We are checking the markets very quickly because we are still in positive territory. Dow is up as S&P 500 also up, not dramatically but positive is good. NASDAQ is up about a quarter percent.

Let's bring in to the stream, John Lagerling, Mercari's U.S. CEO because you've got a new deal in which people who might buy something very fashionable, or people who are selling something very fashionable can now partnered, thanks to you, to get it delivered via Uber. Can you tell us more about this?

JOHN LAGERLING: Absolutely. Well, it's good to be back, Chander. Good to see you. So what happened is that we, we started with shipping only on Mercari. Mercari is not a DTOPS platform. And we realized that some people think it's really a hassle to package an item and go ship it. And then you have to wait for a couple of days for the deal to, the transaction to close.

So we did a trial in San Francisco, New York, and Houston, where we would come to your house and pick up the items that you sold. And deliver it to that person in the same, not neighborhood but in the same city at least, that, that had bought it. So the deal closes you know, within 24 hours. And you get paid really quickly as a seller.

And it was so popular that we decided to figure out a way to roll it out all across America. And we were able to do so together with Uber and Uber direct, that is available now in 4,100 cities. So nationwide launch, and for us, and we're very excited about it.

- My I apologize for jumping in there. John, just talk a little bit more about why Uber was the right fit for you. Because you could have partnered with Lyft, there's a couple of other companies out there that would have been able to do that last mile delivery, or pick. So why was Uber, the right person for you to do this with?

JOHN LAGERLING: Well, we felt like they really understood our vision of what we feel the user experience needs to be. It needs to be hassle free, the communication to both the buyer and seller needs to be very fluent and transparent, and it needs to feel very safe.

And I think Uber has made very significant investments in this space, both in terms of user experience and user safety. And we felt like that's, that's the space we want to play. And we are a safety first marketplace to begin with, that's why we don't do DTOPS. And Uber was able to help us enable this but with the convenience obviously of someone picking it up, and delivering it for you.

- Can you share with us some of the stuff that's very popular on the platform. For instance Crocs, Crocs is still a thing. What are you seeing as far as people searching for Crocs?

JOHN LAGERLING: Well, you know overall, I think with the pandemic, we've seen that big changes up and down in different categories. I believe Crocs is up 400 or 500% just in the last two, the last one month compared to a year ago. And obviously, when the pandemic started, it was all about iPads, and getting that home study or work environment set up.

Now, it's more outdoor activities. We see also Lululemon kind of exercise related stuff. People are getting out of the house more. But the activity on a platform is as strong or stronger, and that's been very interesting to see as well. That it's the shift in the categories that are focused upon, but the level of activity in people managing their lives, and selling things they don't need anymore, and buying new things is very much up there now.

- John, the shift that you're seeing in shopping trends, I guess what are they? And do you expect that shift to be permanent or are people starting to go back to maybe the way things were pre-pandemic?

JOHN LAGERLING: I, well, I mean, I looked at the numbers. we're listed on Tokyo's Stock Exchange, and our earnings is in about three to four weeks. I can't give you details but what I can say is that since we are across all categories, for us, the overall activity remains very, very strong in recommerce. But the focus in terms of which categories are bubbling, that's changing a little.

And as I said, it's more outdoors activities. It's less focused on the nesting in your home with collectibles. Even though collectibles are still going really strong but perhaps not as strong as they were a year ago, when people were really nesting at home. So again, the activity itself has not slowed down, and it's very interesting to see.