I know firsthand how frustrating it can be waiting for your packages to be delivered and then have them taken right off of your porch or apartment mailroom. : People don’t like dealing with insurance companies. WWD: So, ease of experience is the focus? W.L. We do have a U.S.-based call center that’s available six days a week if someone prefers to pick up the phone and file a claim that way, but the majority of our customers like to just do it through their phone or a tablet or computer with Kayley. She handles 98 percent of interactions in under 90 seconds. The majority of people dealing with an issue interact with Extend through our AI-driven claims bot named Kayley, who is available 24/7, 365 days a year, and the experience is like texting with a friend. It’s a minimal fee for security and peace of mind for protection against lost, stolen or damaged packages during transit. : Shipping protection is offered to the consumer at checkout and is usually around 2 percent of the cart value. ![]() WWD: So, what is the cost and process for protection? W.L. Extend isn’t only for major purchases like furniture and jewelry and electronics, but can be for anything sold online - fashion, beauty, apparel, consumables - because the cost to protect them is pretty minimal. It is absolutely something that people are aware of, and we see 52 percent of consumers elect to add shipping protection at checkout, with a 13 percent average attach rate for product protection. This is the local government saying we recognize this as an issue and here are secure lockers with a passcode for residents to go pick up their packages. : Just look at areas starting to pilot programs with centralized locker centers where packages can be delivered because porch piracy has become such a problem. WWD: Are consumers increasingly aware of porch piracy and the option for protection plans? W.L. When we looked for inspiration on a successful paradigm, we came upon AppleCare - it was digitally native, modern, transparent, and the value was being driven to consumers rather than legacy companies who rely on breakage, confusion and hard-to-file claims. We said, can we use technology to help transform commerce much like Stripe did for payments, or Affirm and Klarna and Afterpay did for buy now, pay later. We saw that the top 1 percent of retailers were all offering these value-add services to customers at checkout, but the rest of the market wasn’t being served. Number two, extended warranties and protection plans, much like shipping protection, increase customer peace of mind when making purchase decisions. One, to increase margin on each sale, which is super important right now as all companies are focused on profitability, margin and competing with the behemoths of Amazon and Walmart and others. ![]() : We saw the largest retailers, both online and offline, offering extended warranties and protection plans on the products they sold to do two things. WWD: What was the white space that you saw in the retail industry? Did you feel that other companies were approaching the problem incorrectly or not enough? W.L. With Extend, think of us as AppleCare for everything. The connective tissue for me was always to find ways to use technology to improve on old processes or to solve problems. Most recently with Extend, we started out focused on extended warranties and protection plans for durable goods. ![]() ![]() WWD: You didn’t come from the fashion or retail industries, so how do your past experiences inform your current? Woodrow Levin: I started in options trading in Chicago, and then I started a video game company in a digital safe deposit box with permission sharing. The company has raised $325 million from investors like PayPal and American Express since its founding in 2019, and currently works with retailers One Kings Lane, Brilliant Earth, Peloton, Michaels, Adorama, Visionworks, Z Gallerie, Jomashop and more. WWD caught up with Woodrow Levin, serial entrepreneur and founder and chief executive officer of Extend, which lets merchants offer extended warranties and protection plans through easy-to-integrate APIs or pre-built e-commerce applications like Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud or others.
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