The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [55]
Flextronics has ventured into upcycling as well. In the European Union and many other countries globally, it offers value-added services that enable customers to properly dispose of their electronic equipment. Customer-involved product recycling of this type can include refurbishing and reusing parts, as well as recycling constituent materials. Using information networks to facilitate materials sharing—such as making attractive offers over the Web for customers to participate in upcycling products—is basic Mesh.
how to build a bigger box.
Walmart is the largest retailer in the world. The company—and many other retailers hammering away on the same chorus—sells many cheap, throwaway goods. Consumer products with short life spans populate our landfills. And moving those goods across the globe and country burns energy. True, Walmart is taking steps, and setting a good example, to reduce its carbon footprint. But a bigger, Meshier opportunity lies before them and other big-box retailers.
Walmart, Dixons, Costco, Target, Media Markt, Next, Best Buy, and other big-box retailers are poised to take advantage of a richer part of the value chain. They could move from being huge retailers to becoming huge product service and repair providers. Walmart and other big-boxers could become the center of gravity for the conservation of goods, employ people with actual know-how, and develop deeper, longer term, more profitable relationships with their customers. Perhaps the big-box retailers can make friends with the Makers, Hackerspaces, and Instructables communities to establish a global repair business.
Most of Walmart’s business, of course, is selling stuff. It sells a customer the cheapest TV or toaster today, expecting her to come back in a few years to again buy the new model of cheap TV or toaster. But every part of the value chain—manufacturing the toaster in China, shipping it, warehousing it, stocking it, and disposing of it—involves considerable waste. That waste is lost value that will become more and more visible on the bottom line as its costs rise. Setting aside the inevitable costs of climate change, or any future carbon taxes, a considerable part of that waste is in fossil fuels that are becoming scarcer, more costly to extract, and higher in price. That’s a significant risk to Walmart’s current business model, one that company itself is beginning to recognize.
What if, instead, Walmart guaranteed a customer the best-priced TV and toaster way into the future? If the TV breaks in three years or five years, Walmart repairs it, or offers upgrades that are less expensive than buying a new one. At the end of its life, the company reclaims the old TV, upcycles the parts and materials, and offers the customer a discount on a new one.
Members of a “Walmart Share Club” could be given a special password to a daily online auction on used equipment certified to be in good working condition. The auction would include many items that other customers traded up—customers grateful for a way to deal with unused consumer electronic devices that they don’t know what the hell to do with. REI, for example, has had success with offering a discount on new skis when people return their older ones. REI then refurbishes the old skis and offers them as rentals.
A shift toward access and service would deepen the big-box retailer’s relationship to customers, and win their loyalty. People will look to them not only for the best price but also for reliable service. After all, people buy electronics expecting them to function. When they don’t, it is, at the very least, a big bummer. A service focus would bring more rewarding, frequent, and lasting contact with grateful customers. It’s fundamentally a different business model, with additional rich profit.
take a geek to lunch.
Best Buy has