Collaboration for competitive advantage

Collaboration for competitive advantage:

unpacking the paradox

The logistics industry is experiencing a profound restructuring, driven by simultaneous over and under capacity challenges. As traditional players pursue strategic consolidation to eliminate redundant networks and achieve economies of scale, new players are carving out their own space and cherry-picking profitable segments against the backdrop of rapidly changing customer behaviours and volatile market trends.

The same company can be your customer, your competitor, and your partner.

Evaldas Bieliūnas
Director of Business Development,
Vinted Go

Paradoxically, says Evaldas Bieliūnas, Director of Business Development at Vinted Go, the market is both highly competitive and more collaborative than ever.

‘The same company can be your customer, your competitor, and your partner,’ he says. Vinted Go is itself a reflection of this new blurred reality, being both a leading C2C marketplace and a carrier for both its own customers and for those of its competitors, which can inject their own volumes into its growing network.

This competitive-collaborative dance reflects the turmoil within the industry as new players squeeze margins further. Co-operation helps with efficiencies to help ensure competitive pricing, which means a dominant fact in carrier selection. Strategic alliances to share fulfilment networks, establish multi-carrier partnerships, particularly when it comes to cross border trade, and leverage cloud-based platforms helps drive efficiency without bearing the full capital burden of these investments.

Here’s Helen Scurfield, Chief Executive Officer - Global Returns, Asendia explaining the future of collaboration vs competition:

Some of the new players are not only cash-rich but also come armed with best-in-class data analytics. Amazon Logistics, for example, has become the second largest carrier by volume in the US within a decade.

‘Their mission is to become the most trusted freight provider for shippers around the globe,’ notes Adam Tomczak, Group Head of Delivery Sales, Product Development & Communications at Allegro, a marketplace that moves ‘a few million parcels a day’ in Poland. ‘A company that was a customer of the carriers is now a direct competitor.’

China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has its own logistics business, Cainiao Group, which has a five-day global delivery service globally, with 85% of deliveries made in under five days. These newcomers are outcompeting the traditional big hitters because ‘their systems are fine-tuned for e-commerce whereas legacy carriers, like UPS and Fedex, have to balance different verticals and workflows,’ says Tomczak.

For Allegro, setting up its own carrier has involved developing a disruptive mindset to leverage the infrastructure of its biggest competitor, build a one-click delivery platform and a single contact centre.

‘We have algorithms that tell us which carrier is performing better in a given area so we can tell the customer that Carrier A or Carrier B is the best choice for them for this delivery, for the fastest and cheapest option,’ he adds.

The share-and-deliver mindset builds more faith in shopping, which grows the pie so everyone wins.

Adam Tomczak
Group Head of Delivery Sales, Product Development & Communications, Allegro

It's this ‘share and deliver’ mindset which is most disruptive, says Tomczak. ‘It builds more faith in shopping, so more shoppers move from offline to online, which grows the pie so everyone wins.’

There are risks, of course, with Chris Farren, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Pro Carrier, citing longevity and lack of control. ‘You could be opening up your USP to a competitor,’ he says, stressing that, overall, the benefits outweigh the risks. ‘The buy rather than build model means speed to market and you benefit from all the learning and investment the partner has already made.’

The key is recognising what is core, says Farren.

‘We won’t sell our retail solution to anyone,’ he says. ‘It’s very unique to us and a protected product, but we would be crazy not to open up our service to the US because the more parcels, the faster we get and the better the delivery service we can give to customers who are important to us.’

For many businesses, this is a cultural shift as much as an operational one. Along with a commitment to transparency and clear objectives from the outset, Evaldas Bieliūnas of Vinted Go recommends a ‘fail fast’ mindset when it comes to collaboration.

Go live quickly, roll out a pilot, test your assumptions and if it works, then double down. If it doesn’t work, then kill it. Too many companies are just dipping their toes in the water and not being fully open with their partners, which is just as waste of time.

Evaldas Bieliūnas
Director of Business Development,
Vinted Go

Part of the mindset shift is a willingness to confront what you do well, and what your competitors can do better. Collaboration lets carriers offer more services that might be out of their comfort zone, adding more service and functionality for customers, as well as jump starting innovation.

‘There are some areas we definitely need collaboration, with the energy sector, for example, and for robotics,’ says Mads Bentzen Billesø, Head of Innovation & Partnerships at DFDS.

The industry is clearly searching for ways to find competitive edge by working ever closer with competitors. This paradox perhaps reflects the scale of the challenge for an industry finding it ever hard to carve out sustainable margins in an industry beset by overcapacity and rising costs.

Expect these issues to continue to dominate C-Suite thinking in the months to come as trade disruption and economic volatility bring further pressures to bear – be part of the debate at Leaders in Logistics 2026.