Kinek Goes Mobile: Lets Online Shoppers Pick Up At Local Stores

Doing some online shopping but don?t want the package shipped to your house? Maybe you won?t be home, or worry about packages left on your doorstep. Or maybe the package is a gift for someone in your household? Here?s a cool idea: pick up your online orders at a local store instead. That?s the premise of the young startup called Kinek, which has partnered with a number of brick-and-mortar stores across the U.S. and Canada to serve as ?KinekPoints? ? secure locations where you can pick up your deliveries.
Now, the company is releasing its first iPhone application, allowing you to find nearby KinekPoints, check their hours, get directions, track packages and receive push notifications when the package has arrived.
For consumers, there?s no monthly or sign-up fee to use Kinek, but there?s sometimes a small per-package fee applied by the individual KinekPoint location. The high range for the fee isn?t too bad ? usually around $5 for a regular-sized package. Some retailers don?t charge a fee at all, though, because they benefit from the foot traffic that comes from being a KinekPoint. However, all retailers have to pay to be a KinekPoint partner on a per-parcel basis.
Currently, Kinek has partnered with brick-and-mortar retailers including Medfast, Storage-mart, Pharmasave, and DoItBest (the latter two in select locations only, not the entire chain). It has also partnered with online retailers Sierra Trading Post and Monoprice to provide online shoppers with an alternative shipping address when the company doesn?t ship to their home.
The company now has over a thousand locations across 42 U.S. states and nearly all Canadian provinces. KinekPoints are most popular in major metro areas like San Francisco (73), Los Angeles (59), Chicago (32), San Diego (30), Kansas City (28), Atlanta (27), Miami (27), Toronto (24), Dallas (23), Washington D.C. (23), New York (22), Philadelphia (14),  Seattle (13), Orlando (12) and Montreal (10). But it has really taken off in rural areas along the U.S./Can