DoorDash is delivering for Lowe's, Ulta, and other retailers, and it's making UPS and FedEx nervous

Gig delivery services like DoorDash are growing the list of non-food retailers they work with, creating challenges for UPS and other shipping giants.

• DoorDash and other services continue to strike last-mile delivery deals with retailers.
• Recent examples include DoorDash's partnership with Lowe's.
• That represents a challenge for traditional delivery services like UPS and FedEx, one analyst says.

The range of items you can get delivered from services like DoorDash is getting wider — and that's a challenge for established delivery services like UPS and FedEx.

So far this year, DoorDash has struck deals with Lowe's and Pet Supplies and also expanded its partnership with Ulta Beauty.

Those deals are the latest examples of the agreements that DoorDash has with dozens of retailers, from Dollar General to Michaels, that take the retailer far beyond the restaurant food deliveries that many customers associate with the service.

"The last-mile delivery market is in flux, which means there are clear
opportunities for companies like DoorDash to move in," Zak Stambor, a senior analyst who covers retail and e-commerce at Emarketer, wrote in a report last week.

DoorDash isn't alone in trying to move beyond food delivery. Rival Instacart inked its own deal with Home Depot this May to deliver customer orders from the home improvement chain's stores in as fast as an hour. Instacart also has added delivery deals with stores like Petco and Family Dollar that are beyond the service's historical focus on grocery delivery.

These relative newcomers and their deals with retailers present a challenge for established shipping services, namely UPS and FedEx, Stambor wrote.

At least one of the companies admits that it has taken notice.

UPS CFO Brian Dykes said during the company's most recent earnings call that it's seen "an acceleration of new entrants, new e-commerce customers that were coming into the market that are, quite frankly, running a different model than our traditional customers."

Retailers have expanded their options for delivering products to consumers' doorsteps over the last several years in order to compete with Amazon and other online retailers.

Many customers, meanwhile, say that high shipping costs and slow delivery times are major concerns when they shop online, according to a DHL survey on online shoppers cited by Emarketer.

Still, whether services like DoorDash "can offer a cost-effective option over the long term remains to be seen" for both consumers and the delivery companies, Emarketer's Stambor said.

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