Show HN: Luna Delivery – night packages for London

[evertonfuller]

Hi guys. We just launched last week in London, been pretty crazy so far.

https://LunaDel.com/

Just wanted to get feedback re our front page and if there is anyone out there who has experience with logistics or similar services? Could use some help and just to chat with those in the industry.

Working with a great team sourced from the Freelancer thread on here. It's a really great source of talent. Especially for us here in London, UK.

If there's anyone of you in London who want to meetup or if you use the service, would love to hear your thoughts. Just mail me: [e-mail]

Thanks

[jaksmit]

Um, are you associated with https://angel.co/luna / https://www.useluna.com/ ?

Because if not, it's usually customary to at least use a different company name before cloning a US startup and launching it for a European market.

[kine]

No. He's not. Our lawyers will be in contact

[kolev]

Lawyers, really?! This hostility is totally unnecessary!

[jeza]

Do you own a trademark in Europe? Your lawyers won't necessarily be much help if not.

[jaksmit]

@jeza the company is in the UK; in the UK you don't have to register a trademark as there is support for unregistered trademarks. The law is called "passing off" and looks to protect instances where a product or service could easily be confused with another : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off

I previously had to take somebody to England's High Court for exactly this

[oneeyedpigeon]

I live in London. Will the company called Luna deliver to me from San Francisco? If not, how am I going to get the two confused, and how are they dealing in remotely the same market?

[rahimnathwani]

I previously had to take somebody to England's High Court for exactly this

I'm curious. Would you mind sharing some of the background, and the outcome?

[rahimnathwani]

Interestingly, there are a number of EU trademarks which (i) contain the word Luna, and (ii) include reference to class 39 and 'Transport; packaging and storage of goods.'.

For example: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU009432147

Also interesting is what the Intellectual Property Office has to say about passing off (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-about/t-protect/t-protect-u...):

To be successful in a passing off action, you must prove that:

- the mark is yours

- you have built up a reputation in the mark

- you have been harmed in some way by the other person's use of the mark

It can be very difficult, and as a result, expensive to prove a passing off action.

IANAL but it would seem that a US-based company with (I'm assuming) no customers or operations in the UK would have a hard time showing that the use of a mark by a company which operates within a very small area of London has caused it harm. Also tough to show 'you have built up a reputation in the mark' given that Luna was only founded a few months ago (according to AngelList).

[rahimnathwani]

Your 'Sign up for early access' form won't accept a UK postcode. Nor will the form at the top of the page which says 'Sign up now and be the first to know when Luna is in your city.'

:(

[JazCE]

the American way!

[ulfw]

No shit.

[jnardiello]

Have you considered adding an online business service that allows them to offer their customers evening delivery? (they ship to you - you ship to the customer)

Some kind of partnership i guess. Nice idea. The website looks good, i'd just reduce a bit content fonts, should be a bit smaller than main header.

[evertonfuller]

Yes, we have a contact for partnerships on the site. But haven't pushed an actual dedicated business page on the site yet as we believe in getting a larger customer base first before hitting retailers? Or is there thinking that retailers would be interested in being able to offer the service to their customers, without care to our actual numbers?

[johns]

Copying another startup's idea is lame, but fine, you're just unoriginal. Copying another startup's idea AND name? You're disgusting.

[scotthtaylor]

So you've pretty much just ripped off Luna?

[kolev]

UseLuna.com isn't one of those popular services that everybody's heard of, plus, "luna", meaning "moon", is what many would pick for an overnight delivery service. Don't rush the accusations without putting some thought into it!

[wlievens]

Even if it's accidental - why didn't they at least google their name idea?

[kolev]

I just did - UseLuna.com doesn't show up. If you google from UK, I'm sure you won't see it even with the right terms. All this hostility from the US company is totally unnecessary! Why not try to handle this in a friendly manner first, and then, if it didn't work, go nuclear? Litigation is the worst side of the US and trips over any desire to innovate and start any business here! This country has the highest number of lawyers per capita, and their high costs are embedded in every pricing model - it's crazy!

[scotthtaylor]

That doesn't make any sense.

[dirkdk]

Wow, nice ripoff. Making me as a European really proud.

[rahimnathwani]

evertonfuller and kine were the only people to respond to the person selling the domain parcelhere.com: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7072450

The WHOIS shows it's still owned by shawnk.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I hope you're not forcing that nice young lady to deliver packages on the wintry streets of London, at midnight, wearing as little as she is in that photo!

[elemeno]

The website is nice, but I'm not sure that the business model is sound.

This is for two different reasons -

1) If there was a solid business case for making deliveries between 6pm and 10pm (reasonable after-work hours), why aren't delivery companies already doing so? If there was a case for it, I'm sure they'd happily do it and charge extra for it - just like many of them charge extra to guarantee delivery before a certain time in the morning.

1.1) Is missed deliveries really that big of a problem? Anecdotally, I order a lot of things online for delivery - to the extent that I managed to make over 190 orders on Amazon alone in one year. In the past two years or so, I've had less than a dozen parcels that couldn't be delivered on the first or second try. I live in a building with six other apartments - it's rare that someone isn't around to sign for a package.

2) There's an increasing number of shops that offer a locker service like Amazon Locker Service. Since this doesn't cost me anything extra, other than the time taken to pick up the parcel, what's the incentive to use a service like yours?

[evertonfuller]

Thanks for your comment!

1. I would actually completely agree with you that evening deliveries is not enough to sustain a business. Our roadmap consists of many other delivery/shipping services that will be rolled out. We just thought the concept of night deliveries was a good way to introduce the consumer side of our company, building off from there. Especially as it helps polish our internal system methods before we offer 24/7 delivery.

2. Indeed, London also has other services like Collect+ where you can get your item at your local corner shop. We do plan on introducing our own locker system now in the spring, so we are on board and in support of the locker system as existing in harmony with a dedicated delivery system too.

[oneeyedpigeon]

1.1) Not everyone lives in a building with six other apartments. Don't underestimate a) the number of people who might not have neighbours available to sign b) how much some of us don't particularly want to keep bothering our neighbours in the evening, collecting packages from them. Almost everything that can happen to a package when I'm not available to sign for it is problematic: I recently had a Mac Mini delivered, which I wasn't present for. It had been left in a 'safe place', of course: our recycling bin...

[10feet]

1) I guess we shouldn't try to implement anything, because if it was a viable business model, someone would have already done it, right? You can used this argument against anything.

This is the perfect time for people who actually work, so most people with a disposable income.

[elemeno]

Not at all.

However if you're going to enter a market that already has multiple players and can be assumed to be competitive then surely it's important to understand why your competitors aren't doing whatever your idea is as it's likely to suggest if your idea might not be feasible, or profitable, or if there's another issue that might get in the way that you don't know about yet. Of course on the other hand it might tell you why it's not a good idea for them, but is a good idea for you - they might be burdened with legacy systems that would need to be rewritten to deal with deliveries after 5pm. They might have employee contracts which are hard to renegotiate. They might have hubs that are too far away from their delivery sites to make a shorter delivery run profitable after employee time and fuel costs are taken into account. But unless you're willing to ask the question, you're not going to know are you.