How we created our own luggage shipping service
I, Mikhail Panarin, have been a successful businessman for 16 years, and I love innovation and new trends that help make life easier. And I also like to be active and spend my time in a useful way.
Like everyone else, I love travelling with family and friends, small or large and noisy company, discovering new places and visiting favourite, familiar cities, countries, beach and ski resorts in Russia and abroad.
I have been a keen skier for a long time and recently bought a handy set of equipment.
One day, I went with my family and friends to a ski resort in Sochi. And here we ran into problems: how to transport my downhill skis, my eldest daughter’s snowboard, my youngest’s favourite pram (you know, the only girls going) and two large suitcases, not to mention the essentials on the plane. Skiing equipment takes too much space, and it all has to be loaded into a taxi, brought to the airport and handed over separately as an oversized item. Upon arrival at the resort to do the same steps to get to your favorite hotel. Also, we came across the fact that Pobeda Airlines charges extra for luggage. First to carry all that heaviness, and then to pay extra!? And then go through this whole ‘fascinating’ quest again on the way home???
After searching for hours on the internet we realized that in Russia there is no service that could easily pick up luggage, skis, snowboards, directly from home and deliver to the place of rest in the hotel. How is that possible? At a time when there are so many apps and services built for our convenience, none for the transfer of luggage?
Once again feeling all this pain on our own, my comrade Rinat Kryukov and I, who was travelling with me, decided to change the situation, wishing to simplify life for ourselves and similarly active travellers. Our dream was to come to the mountains where our skis or snowboards would already be waiting for us.
This is how we came up with the idea of SkyShift’s «Friendly» ski/snowboard and suitcase transfer service.
About our service
We have developed our own mobile app. We call our like-minded ski clients our friends.
Of course, not many people knew about our services, we rushed to inform everyone about our novelty. Our consultants-promoters worked at ski resorts in Sochi for the 2019/2020 season, professionally talking about all the subtleties and features of the service, answering all your questions. And our colourful mobile phone-shaped leaflets appealed so much to our potential friends that they were happy to take photos with them and even took them home to show their friends and relatives.
Thousands of grateful friends sent us positive feedback and ideas for expanding our service.
We finished the winter season and quarantine came. We had the idea of sending «warm» greetings to relatives and friends all over Russia and CIS countries, until the borders were closed. This idea with nice parcels really appealed to our friends, hundreds of suitcases and boxes with presents or forgotten things were sent to cities across Russia. At the same time, we expanded our service, upgrading the application more and more, taking into account the wishes of our friends, adding more than 55 cities for delivery. In addition to suitcases, it was also decided to ship bicycles, prams and various sports equipment.
So, when we couldn’t find a service we needed for our own comfort, we set up our own.