The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [46]
The number of Web sites and apps that make sharing easier is growing. Expensure is a free and secure tool that helps people who live or travel together to securely track, manage, and resolve shared joint expenses quickly. The tool resolves a common problem for people who are sharing rooms, cars, tools, or virtually anything else. As people start making a shift toward the Mesh, smart businesses like Expensure are able to see the impediments that discourage individuals or markets from using Mesh services. For entrepreneurs, these points of pain become hopeful and glaring niches of opportunity.
don’t nap. adapt.
Mesh businesses are resilient. They’re structured to adapt quickly and well to new conditions or consumer desires. When an individual owns a bike or a home, changing the model or the location can be difficult. Mesh businesses can offer a different bike model or expand the available locations for vacation homes with relative ease. As technology, government policies, fuel types, airfare prices, or other conditions change, Mesh businesses can adjust their offerings. Since they are thoroughly integrated with their partners and customers, they can iterate and adapt quickly and well.
Frequent, transparent contact with customers and partners equips Mesh businesses to spot problems, trends, and opportunities early. They can then respond rapidly to strengthen customer trust, or update their offerings. When hybrid vehicles came onto the market, there was a significant amount of customer skepticism and resistance to jumping in with both feet. People were reluctant to be the first to buy. Mesh businesses allow new products like hybrids to be introduced more like tapas—as a sample first. Then if the product is well received (or preferably irresistible), customers can use it regularly, and tell others about how fun and easy it actually is to use.
Like with any business, the early enthusiasts are big allies. The added bonus in a Mesh business is that the threshold to engagement—what a customer needs to get over the hump of using a new product—is significantly less than a full-on purchase requires. Even for traditional businesses looking to sell products, a Mesh-style offering can lower resistance to new purchases. A share service may be the business’s version of tryvertising—a way for customers to have a taste of the EV, say, without a big financial commitment upfront. The lower threshold to engagement produces less stress for the new customer, and gives the business an opportunity to get feedback from several customers in a short time.
Consider thredUP’s adaptation to those short, expensive people that its initial customers were living with (also known as children). The company’s initial base of satisfied adults with new swapped, button-down shirts let them in on a little secret: kids require full-on wardrobe changes on a regular and mostly predictable schedule. In other words, the little buggers are expensive. Voilà! It defined a high-value, big-market need that isn’t going away any time soon. ThredUP listened and learned. It leveraged the platform it had already built, and then relaunched with a whole new focus. In that way, it kept most of its original customers while gaining shorter ones, too.
waste equals food.
Most business people understand that, no matter what country you live in, there will be financial consequences for creating or harboring waste, whether in the form of energy, garbage, or squandered natural resources. A number of countries, now including the United States, are increasingly requiring manufacturers to upcycle, reuse materials, or pay for disposal of their products. Today, all