Zip.ca
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Zip.ca | |
 |
|
| Type | Private [1] |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2004 |
| Headquarters | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Key people | Rob Hall, Founder and Chairman Rick Anderson, President and CEO |
| Industry | Electronic commerce |
| Products | Online DVD rental |
| Revenue | Not disclosed |
| Employees | ~50 |
| Website | http://www.zip.ca |
Zip.ca is the largest online DVD rental company, offering flat rate DVD rental-by-mail strictly to customers in Canada. It is currently the only Canadian company that approaches the American market leader Netflix in terms of selection, with over 52,000[1] unique titles and an inventory of 270,894 discs.
Zip.ca is a member of the privately held Momentous group of companies.
Contents |
[edit] Corporate history
Zip.ca began operations in February 2004[2] as an online DVD rental company operating strictly in Canada. The company's base of operations are located in Ottawa, Ontario. In July 2005 it arranged to provide the fulfillment services for Rogers Video Direct, the new online subsidiary of one of Canada's largest video store chains. By February 2006, Zip.ca had over 30,000[3] members and shipping roughly 15,000 discs per day. In August 2006, Zip.ca announced passing the 5,000,000[4] disc rental milestone.
[edit] Zip.ca specifics
Zip.ca follows the general model for an online DVD rental company. Some details specific to Zip.ca include:
- Shipping - Zip.ca started with a single warehouse and distribution centre, in a Nepean business park in the Canadian capital city of Ottawa, Ontario. To decrease shipment times to other parts of the country, it used what it called a "hybrid" or "gateway" system, where they express-ship large batches of envelopes directly to Canada Post sorting plants in major cities. These shipments are designed to arrive during the same overnight sorting shift that would have processed them had they been mailed locally, so this method should provide something close to local delivery times within those urban areas, and improved delivery times within the various regions compared to letting Canada Post handle the entire trip. Returns were sent to Zip.ca in Ottawa, and thus didn't benefit from this arrangement. In 2006 Zip.ca has extended this model to include warehouses in (and returns to) Calgary, Alberta, Toronto, and Vancouver, British Columbia, and the "gateway" routes are limited to areas with no regional warehouse (eg.Ottawa->Montreal and Ottawa->Atlantic provinces).
- ZipRefill - To alleviate the return delivery times, Zip.ca will (for qualified customers), send a disc to a customer once they notify the company (via the website) that a disc has been returned to Zip.ca, without waiting for it to actually be received. Only a single ZipRefill is allowed at any one time, which allows a person with, for instance, a 4-disc membership to at times actually have 5 discs in their possession or in transit.
- ZipList - In August 2006, Zip.ca launched a new customer movie queue which is more flexible than its predecessor. With the new queue, each title can be individually ordered at the user's preference. This change was made to address one of the most significant criticisms of the Zip.ca in the past.
- Shipping Limits - In January 2006, Zip.ca introduced monthly limits on the number of discs shipped free (customers on the 4-disc plan have a monthly limit of 11, for instance). Customers who exceed these limits can, at their option, continue to receive shipments for the month, but will be charged a fee (currently $2.49) for each addition disc shipped that month. The new policy takes effect for existing customers on February 27, 2006. In August 2006, Zip.ca quietly introduced a new plan which removed the shipping limits for users on a 3-disc/unlimited plan. This new plan is priced the same as the 4-disc/11-disc-per-month plan.
[edit] Rental plans
| Plan | Monthly fee | DVDs out | DVDs per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 DVD | $10.95 | 1 | 2 |
| 2 DVD | $18.95 | 2 | 5 |
| 3 DVD Unlimited | $24.95 | 3 | Unlimited |
| 4 DVD | $24.95 | 4 | 11 |
| 6 DVD | $36.95 | 6 | 16 |
| 8 DVD | $49.95 | 8 | 22 |
Zip.ca imposes a free shipping limit per month, unless the customer chooses the special "Unlimited" plan. When the DVD shipment limit is reached, the customer must choose to pay for additional shipments ($2.49 per DVD) in the billing month or wait the next billing month before Zip.ca continues shipments.
[edit] Competitors and the Canadian rental marketplace
On August 30, 2005 Zip.ca announced[5] that it was buying out the online operations of its main Canadian rival, VHQonline.ca, and has also picked up other companies going out of business, leaving no single large competitor, although there are a number of smaller companies in operation.
The introduction of the monthly shipping limits may help some of these companies to attract customers that might otherwise have chosen Zip.ca. Netflix had announced plans to expand to expand to Canada (and the UK) in 2005, but has put those plans on hold, presumably to deal with the increased online competition from Blockbuster Video (and potentially Amazon.com) in the US market. Blockbuster has stores in Canada, but has not yet announced any plans to extend online rental operations to Canada.
[edit] References
- ^ Zip.ca and Canada Post Deliver Success. Zip.ca (18 August 2006).
- ^ The Disks are in the Mail. Ottawa Citizen (24 February 2004).
- ^ Forum posting from Zip.ca President. Zip.ca (02 February 2006).
- ^ Zip.ca Rents 5 Millionth DVD. Zip.ca (11 August 2006).
- ^ Zip.ca and VHQ Online Enter into Purchase Agreement. Zip.ca (30 August 2005).
[edit] External links
- Zip.ca website
- Canadian DVD rental website - List of Canadian companies (including inventory estimates) and other related information and tools.
- Online DVD Rental Guide - Active discussion forums for Canadian DVD rentals; listings and ratings for Canadian rental companies.
- Zip Shipping Route - Information on how to track where your Zip shipments are coming from.
