Xend: From TVs to Pencils, an Easier Way to Send Packages in the Philippines

Xend is unique. At the very least, that’s what its founder, Bjorn Pardo, would have you believe. As he says:

We are very unique. Depending on the point of view, we could be considered as a courier, e-commerce or technology company. For most, we are a courier company primarily serving the e-commerce market. Internally, we consider ourselves a hybrid of the 3 above industries.

Unique or not, Xend does offer some innovations its competitors don’t. The playing field is rife with courier services, LBC, 2GO, JRS and Air21. You can even see the occasional FedEx and DHL truck scurrying around the metro on any given day. How Xend differs itself is on e-commerce.

Founded in 2004 as Xend Business Center, as a single proprietorship by Bjorn Pardo, in Makati City, Xend initially offered only international logistic and courier services. It wasn’t until 2006 that Xend started offering domestic courier services, and later that year, a door to door tracking system. In 2007, Xend was incorporated as Xend Business Solutions Inc. and moved to it’s new headquarters in Mandaluyong City. 2008 saw the release of its revolutionary myXend Online Shipping Platform, which provided online real-time booking, online waybill printing and auto-email shipment status notifications.

By focusing primarily on online establishments and sellers, Xend has quickly amassed a database of well over 50,000 partnered e-commerce merchants. And a quick look at this list reveals it is quite formidable, with the likes of Ebay.ph, Sulit.com.ph and PisoBid to name a few. But even if you’re not into e-commerce, or just a bit old fashioned, Xend has the capability to serve any business that needs documents or parcels delivered, not just online ones.

For sole founder Bjorn Pardo, innovation came out of necessity.

I started selling online as a teenager and my biggest problem was high shipping fees and inconvenient processes. I had to waste hours in my day just to bring parcels to the post office, fill out forms and email my customers their tracking numbers. On top of that, I was losing sales because of high shipping costs which were beyond my control. I knew there had to be a better way to do this so I founded Xend.

So what is this better way? According to their site, it involves just three simple steps. First, register for a myXend account from their website, which only takes a few seconds. Second, prepare your package for shipping. With Xend, there’s no minimum purchase required, and you can ship anything from a television to a pencil. You can either print out the waybill to attach to the package, or use a handwritten one, which you can get from the courier on pickup day. Finally, schedule a pickup date, and one of their couriers will be along to take up your package for delivery.

For the package itself, Xend offers 2 pouch sizes, measuring either a large 9×14 inches or an extra large 12×18 inches. The large pouch costs PHP 59 (US$ 1.43) to ship within Metro Manila and PHP 89 (US$ 2.16) to any other point in the country. For the XL pouch it’s PHP 79 (US$ 1.91) for Manila and PHP 139 (US$ 3.37) everywhere else. For either pouch, there is no limit on weight, as long as it’ll fit inside, it’s a go. Packages that can’t fit inside one of the pouches will have to be weighed though, and the pricing based on that weight. All couriers are equipped with their own weighing scales upon pick-up.