Intro

People and organisations want to see their community flourish. What can we do to stimulate growth and well-being? UrbaNodes aims to be the innovative fiber in the urban fabric. With a focus on stimulating local shopping & delivery. Based on best practices.

UrbaNodes – Urban Nodes – are geographic points with ( future) high concentrations of economic or social resources and activities for the benefit of the community. UrbaNodes as a platform facilitates cost effective economic and community development efforts by gathering people, Municipalities, resources and local shops & couriers within a close distance.

Source: Boogertman

Source: Urban Nodes in Suburbia (UNiS)
by Donald Monti

Vison

UrbaNodes is an initiative to build a network of visionary & professionally engaged organisations each playing a vital role in urban community. In the city and in villages. Connecting them.

A platform allowing Municipalities, Cities, retail estate developers, local shops associations and shopping high streets to interact with local shops, sports clubs, brands/FMCG producers, couriers, but also engaged individuals. All of them have the potential playing an important role in the network of connected – urban – nodes.

The vision of UrbaNodes is to offer practical and scalable white-label shopping & delivery solutions allowing relevant stakeholders to work together, building an independently operated platform in which stakeholders from diverse backgrounds can add value to the community.

As Donald Monti shows in his UNiS framework, it takes a thorough but effective organized process to involve all relevant stakeholders and increase the success of real estate projects. With this framework he claims to decrease the average 36 months to a healthy 6 months to get all parties aligned. UrbaNodes adds smart and responsive shopping IT solutions to the framework to enable an effective and sustainable shop management.

Local Shopping

Local shops should offer awesome service and quality to their customers. Fresh products & services that enhance the life of consumers, we all need them. Right here and now. At this moment pure webshops and retail supermarkets are threatening local shops by offering increasing shopping convenience to the consumer.

Local shops need to be supported by passionate suppliers allowing them to grow and offer awesome service and quality to their customers. Being a supplier to local shops in one way or another there is the responsibility to support them creating an even higher level of convenience for consumers.

When are you personally tempted to order fresh food at the local bakery & butcher? We are betting via an easy-to-use webshop on your smartphone. Entering your loyalty card provided by the Municipality or local shops association. Choosing the payment method you like.

Connect24-7 allows shops, shopping street associations and Municipalities to offer this awesome shopping experience to consumers.

Local Delivery

According to multiple surveys, more than 60% of brick-and-mortar shops do not offer any professional delivery service to their customers. Despite the fact that more and more consumers prefer to buy products in webshops. Most important reason: the convenience of getting delivered. It’s a fact that 70% of webshop clients want to be delivered at home or another address by preference. And not picking it up in the shop. This results in a big opportunity for local shops to benefit from their local presence and local stock: they are able to offer the physical products in their store for pick-up but also offer same-day delivery or even within 90 minutes to the customer.

CityDelivery
The delivery platform of partner CityDelivery organizes delivery of products to the customers. By local couriers picking up the products delivering them at the customer’s chosen address and time. Together with several Municipalities and Logistics Service Providers (LSP’s) UrbaNodes explores the role of City Distribution Centers (CDC) in the Last Mile distribution of products in Cities.

Shopping platform

UrbaNodes works together with 4 types of stakeholders in building shopping communities by introducing white-label shopping platforms to the market:

Cities & Municipalities
How can a City or village support local shops with limited resources and keep the community alive? UrbaNodes provides the affordable shopping platform and loyalty card that stimulates local shopping & allows citizens to enjoy products from the region. For more information please contact us for a free demo.

Local shops associations
Will shops wait till competition from supermarkets and pure webshops increases even more? Or will they start benefitting from the combined experience and know-how of existing shops represented in local shops associations? This allows them to share local shopping marketing campaigns and set up a professional deal & delivery platform. UrbaNodes offers a white-label shopping platform which allows shops to offer their products to the multi-channel shopping market. As customers increasingly are looking for information & deals on-the-go on their PC and via their smartphone.

Next to the shopping platform we offer local shops associations to focus on external communication instead of gathering support internally. UrbaNodes´ partners provides an effective communication platform between shops but also with their shoppers! Contact us now for more information.

Retail Estate developers & investors
Innovative retail estate developers integrate the idea of intelligent & responsive buildings into the design of a shopping street or center. This stimulates shops to fully benefit from technology in order to connect easily with customers, suppliers and partners as well as increasing the scope for more value-added services and facilities. As retail projects need to bring in rent for some decades, the necessity of local shops to attract shoppers, even those already confident in shopping online & mobile, becomes more vital.

FMCG producers
Fast Moving Consumer Goods producers want to be closer to the consumer. Crowd sourcing but also selling directly to consumers enables them to do so. UrbaNodes investigates with leading and regional FMCG producers in pilot projects in Amsterdam and in the region of Antwerp the opportunities of delivering directly to consumers. Interested in joining our projects, contact us now.

Source: Farmer's Market Node Concept

Spatial Design

Design can make people’s heart tick more passionately. The design and actual construction of centers and nodes in city & village can make or break a real estate project for a long depreciation period. Let’s make sure old and new urban fibers are preserved to guarantee vivid and livable communities. Involving the vital part that local shops, companies and organisations play in this. Courageous enough to challenge decision makers like Municipalities and spatial designers with issues like service models of shops to consumers, stock keeping and delivery concepts.

Effective spatial design forces us to think about the future of local shops, maybe even relocating some businesses to sustainable urban centers and nodes. Real estate developers play an important role in this development