Lowe's partnered with DoorDash and Alphabet's Wing to deliver screws by drone because the one thing missing from your impulse buy of cabinet hinges was the carbon footprint of military surveillance technology.
The home improvement retailer looked at its distribution network and said we need this to be more complicated. Two companies wasn't enough. Three companies splitting the margin on a fifteen-dollar order of caulk. That's the innovation.
DoorDash built a platform to deliver cold food slowly. Alphabet's Wing built drones that comply with FAA regulations, which means they fly about as fast as you walk. Lowe's sells hammers. Together they will ensure your emergency hardware store run now involves coordination between a gig worker, a software engineer in Mountain View, and a regional manager who still uses a BlackBerry.
The drone will hover above your driveway. It will lower a package on a tether. Your neighbors will film it. You will explain to them that yes, those are deck screws. No, you could not wait. Yes, you paid a delivery fee that exceeded the cost of the screws. No, you don't want to talk about it.
Retail traders will see this headline and check the stock price of all three companies. They will cross-reference it with a TikTok they watched about logistics. They will buy calls on Lowe's because drones are the future. The future, in this case, is a ten-pound package of grout floating through your backyard while a drone burns through a battery that costs more than the grout.
This is what happens when three corporations have a meeting and nobody says the word no. DoorDash wants to be more than food. Alphabet wants Wing to justify its existence. Lowe's wants to pretend it's not just a warehouse with a lumber section. The result is a Rube Goldberg machine that ends with you getting a toilet flapper delivered by air.
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