Toshi, the London-based last-mile delivery start-up founded by fashion entrepreneur Sojin Lee, won LVMH’s 2022 Innovation Awards Grand Prize Thursday.
Lee, who was a founding team member at Net-a-Porter, created Toshi in 2017 with an eye to revamping the e-commerce delivery experience in line with luxury’s codes.
As a white-label service plugged into brands’ e-commerce sites, Toshi allows customers to sign up for a specific delivery window as well as having their orders fulfilled by salaried couriers who are trained like store associates.
As retailers ramp up their focus on offering omnichannel services to clients, Toshi hopes to help luxury brands extend the store experience to online. Its couriers are trained to assist and advise shoppers, as well as in having the “emotional intelligence” to read cues for how to behave in clients’ homes, Lee said.
Toshi can tap into brands’ store inventories to fulfil orders, as well as mobilising brands’ traditional e-commerce inventories. The company routs shipments from logistics centres through an ultra-local network of small warehouses not unlike those used by grocery start-ups like Getir, Lee said.
LVMH’s lauded Toshi for bringing “elevated and humanised standards to the delivery of luxury goods.”
As a result of the prize, the company will receive six-months of support and mentoring from the industry’s biggest conglomerate.
The service is already being adopted by the industry’s top names: Toshi has worked with privately-held giant Chanel on store-to-door deliveries in London for over two years, where it more recently went live with LVMH brands including Dior Couture, Celine, Rimowa, and Berluti.
In New York, the company is preparing to add Tiffany and Dior Couture to its list of brands. An expansion to Los Angeles is being plotted for early next year, Lee said.
