A watch for blind people, being bought by sighted people

Pic: Kickstarter                   

The Bradley Timepiece, a watch designed for blind people and named after Bradley Snyder, a Paralympian gold medallist who lost his sight in Afghanistan, is up for design of the year at London's Design Museum. But it's mostly being bought by sighted people, writes Chris Stokel-Walker at the BBC.

Designed to touch and see, around a groove in the centre a ball-bearing rotates to mark the minutes. Around the edge of the watch, another ball bearing rotates to tell the hours.

Realising that less than 10% of visually impaired people can read braille, with a constant battle between functionality and producing a beautiful object, the designers eventually found a solution - a magnet underneath the metal watch face would control two rotating ball bearings for hours and minutes.

Snyder became involved because of his need to use a watch that did not highlight him as someone with a special need. “I love the idea of using the same thing that everyone does. And I want to feel as normal as possible."

With the watch now named the Bradley, there was an appeal on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website, in July last year - 3,681 people from 65 different countries backed the project, donating a total of $594,602 (£357,290). It will be available for sale from May in the US, with the UK and Europe likely to follow later. According to the BBC, a further 1,000 people have since pre-ordered the watch online but only 1-2% are visually impaired….

A great example of thinking outside the box, breaking away from the erroneous stereotype that visually impaired people are not fashion-conscious...

More details and pics on the Kickstarter site

Shop where you borrow instead of buy - making do via the sharing economy...

                                                                                                                                  pic: Leila Berlin
According to The Guardian, the most popular items in Leila, Berlin's first "borrowing shop*" are the electric drills.

But it's not worth that person buying their own tools, said founder Nikolai Wolfert. "The average electric drill is used for 13 minutes in its entire lifetime – how does it make sense to buy something like that? It's much more efficient to share it."

Scarey...

Members can borrow anything from board games to wine glasses, fog machines to hiking rucksacks, juicers to unicycles. All they need to do to become members is drop off an item of their own.

Virtual tour of Leila here

Borrowing shops are under development in several Berlin districts, with similar projects being set up in Kiel and Vienna. In Berlin-Wedding, 80 artists are working with recycled materials to build Berlin's first "indoor treehouse", which will eventually serve as a "local public thinktank". In Neukölln, the Trial & Error culture lab organises swaps for artists' materials and fashion items.

At the more commercial end of the spectrum, Deutsche Telekom recently helped launch the social network wir.de, which allows neighbours to swap tools and services and sets up communal "toy boxes" in playgrounds around Berlin.

Whilst the idea of the "share-economy" is developing well elsewhere (i.e. Airbnb, which matches travellers to people with rooms to rent, and car2go and even M&S offering customers discounts in exchange for unwanted clothes, which are then donated to Oxfam) there is a sense that the shift away from ownership towards functionality is nowhere as tangible in Europe as in Berlin.

If you add share-economy drivers to consumers increasingly ‘making do’, it may begin to explain the difficulty of driving demand above flatline levels in many categories, everywhere…

And going back to drills, it is well known that drill manufacturers sell millions of ¾ inch drill-bits, not because people want drill-bits, but because they need ¾ inch holes, however produced...

In other words, the most insidious competition can be a product or service that replaces traditional ways of meeting needs. Therefore, training ourselves to focus on functionality and real need instead of want, can help us to anticipate and survive the shock of third-party innovation, hopefully….

* See video on how Leila works in practice here

A Blink as good as a Nod in finding products instore?

                                                                                           pic: Lighting

Philips' app-based system determines the shopper's location via the flickering of the overhead LED lights

The system incorporates LED bulbs that are installed in the existing overhead fixtures. Depending on the specific fixture in which it's placed, each of those bulbs will flicker at a different distinct rate. Although that flickering is too rapid to be detected by the human eye, it can be detected by the camera of a phone running the app.

When a shopper wants to find a product, the app starts by ascertaining the person's location within the store, based on the flickering "signature" of the fixture immediately overhead. It then accesses a map of the store, and proceeds to guide the user from their current location to that of the item, presenting access to coupons where appropriate.

In fact new research shows that “missing key information used for product identification is the equivalent of being out-of-stock in a physical store”, and being unable to find the goods renders them out-of-stock, in shopper terms. The GS1 UK survey of 2,000 UK adults also revealed shopper beliefs, with 24% saying they didn’t trust online product information as much as they did the information they were given in store..

As the mobile shopper in the aisle is obviously online-instore, then accessing further product details, and being satisfied with the answers, helps the shopper to complete the purchase from a retailer they trust….

Availability, credibility, defensibility and value-for-money in a seamless, consistent multi-channel environment, is all it takes, as we anticipate a price-war to end all price-wars…

Ever hanker after the old days?

Threats for the detergents category - Bead-based washing machine could put market in a spin

And just when we thought that detergent innovation was about faster, cheaper, cleaner, along comes a solution from outside the box...

The Xeros washing machine looks like a standard machine, but washes clothes with reusable plastic beads that absorb dirt, resulting in an environmentally friendly wash that uses far less water and detergent.

Sheffield-based Xeros has announced plans for a potential £100m stock market listing that could bring its pioneering technology to the mass market. Developed by Stephen Burkinshaw, a chemist at Leeds University, the appliance is aimed at commercial laundries, but the company has already developed a prototype for domestic use and is looking to sign a deal with a major manufacturer.

As evidence of its serious intent, the group has filed 27 patents for a range of reusable polymer beads to clean textiles, synthetic fibres, plastics, leather, metal, glass, paper, cardboard and wood.

Cost reductions:
Cost Factor                            Conventional Washing Xeros Cleaning Saving
Water (litres per kg washload)                 20.0                         5.6           72%
Heat (KwH per kg of wash load                0.17                        0.09         47%
Detergent (g/kg of wash load)                  16.0                          8.0           50%
Source: Xeros site

Whilst category management usually rewards enhanced focus within the category, the Xeros innovation provides a reminder that substitution or even replacement of the category might prove more rewarding...

The Super Shopper dominates multichannels for 70% of retail sales...

A new study by eBay and Deloitte detailed in Internet Retailing, defines the Super Shopper as a user of smartphones and tablets to access all multichannels, with retailers needing to target these people to boost their sales in all routes to consumer.

While most of the population are now buying in shops and online, Super Shoppers are more likely to add to this by browsing across different mobile devices and making use of on-to-offline services like Click & Collect.

These 18% of people who shop frequently account for 70% of total UK retail sales (equivalent to over £200bn in 2013).

Super Shoppers are also highly savvy, finds eBay. They are 30% more likely to do their research online before visiting a store.

Meanwhile, comparison-services like Which? are making it easier for shoppers to objectively assess the merits of traditional retailers. The latest Which? report shows that Aldi has edged out Waitrose as the UK's favourite supermarket based on its pricing, quality of fresh food, its range of products and how easy it is to find items (Yes, Aldi!).

In fact, Aldi polled 76% in the survey, with Waitrose reaching 75%, and The Co-operative coming last at 50%, according to The Daily Mail. The Mail also quoted a new report by Rowan, a specialist discount wholesaler, showing that 63% of UK consumers now shop in places such as Poundland or 99p Stores.

And pound shops are certainly not the preserve of those on lower incomes. In fact, 49% of those in households earning £50,000 or more shop in fixed price stores.

All told, we are witnessing the emergence of super-savvy shoppers, willing and able - via augmented comparison services - to shop around, at high speed and via every available channel.

They are radically changing retailing in the process...

Patently, retailers and brand owners not only have to ensure that consistent multichannel messages and positioning statements are available to all shoppers, but it seems crucial that all such dialogue be transparent and defensible on the assumption that all shoppers are now super-savvy, with the kit to match....

Moreover, most shoppers now have the means to implement the 10x tell-a-friend multiplier...  In other words, shoppers that like a product/retailer tell 1 friend, those who dislike 'what was in the tin' complain to 10 friends...  

Asda playing instore...?

Given increased supply-chain efficiencies, coupled with shopper reluctance to drive out-of-town, resulting in increasing redundancy of large-space retailing, Asda appears to be following Tesco’s lead in seeking to buy businesses that might complement their retail offering whilst absorbing overheads.

The Daily Express reports that Asda is rumoured to want to buy out the Early Learning Centre, given Mothercare’s struggles…

Apart from a good purchase price, the ELC would be a natural fit in terms of family offering, but could also add to instore theatre and enrich the shopping experience whilst keeping the kids amused.

Great news for toy suppliers, but a possible threat for NAMs in less exciting categories…? However, surely this presents an opportunity for extra creativity that might also be rolled out elsewhere?

London's first pay-per-minute café facing closure?

Ziferblat is a social network in real life! At 388 Old Street, Shoreditch, London, EC1V 9LT, the café opens from 1000 to midnight, and charges 3p per minute.

For NAMs willing to try, you pick up an alarm clock on arrival, note the time, and check out on completion. Complementary snacks and coffee are available 'on tap' and even bespoke coffee if required.

However, rather than being inundated with 'smash & grab' free-loaders making it uneconomical, Ziferblat, the country’s first pay-per-minute café, is facing closure less than three months after opening because of a lease dispute. According to The Standard, Ziferblat’s role as a café where customers make their own coffee and food, but pay by the minute, means it falls into a legal grey area between being classed as a “shared workspace” and a venue “selling food and drink”.

Hopefully, ways can be found to live with the bureaucracy, avoid biting the dust, and allow the emergence of a new approach to food service...

US shops that only offer food past its sell-by date

According to today's news in the Guardian that a man is to be put on trial in February after he was allegedly caught stealing from the bins behind an Iceland store in London, it appears that Freegans, or bin scavengers, are becoming a feature of the current flatline environment.

Paul May, a freelance web designer, is expected to argue in court that he does not consider taking the mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, and cakes from the garbage outside of Iceland as illegal, because the food was  going to be disposed of and he needed it to feed himself, the Guardian reported.

Given that the Freegan movement started in New York a decade ago, it follows that the US should be first in opening stores that only offer food that is past its sell-by date.

Doug Rauch’s new venture The Daily Table, due to open in May, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, will be part grocery store and part cafe, specializing in healthy, inexpensive food and catering to the underserved population in Dorchester, Mass. What makes it controversial – at least at first glance – is Rauch’s business model: His store will exclusively collect and sell food that had crept past its “sell-by” date, rendering it unsellable in other, more conventional supermarkets.

But the real challenge, in Rauch’s vision, isn’t just getting that excess food to the people who need it. It’s convincing them that it’s worth eating.

Rauch is looking for a market-driven solution to food waste. The store will be a non-profit, but after an initial round of funding gets it started, he intends for it to be self-sustaining.

Interesting to see how long after the Freegan Garbage theft trial, the UK follows the US example with shops offering past sell-by food...

...and as an extension of consumers' tendency to 'make do', how much demand will be taken out of the market...

NB Update on Iceland Three case:
Following an outcry on Twitter and questions about the public interest value in pursuing a prosecution – with even bosses at Iceland expressing doubts – the Crown Prosecution Service today announced that it was dropping the case.

The Empty Shop – A retail innovation in Manchester launching January 23rd

As we head into a year where growth will come at the expense of the competition and especially via innovation, then being open to new ‘reversal’ ideas could be one way of kick-starting our creative juice production after the long break…

For example, based on a success in Sao Paulo that raised 3.2 tonnes of unwanted clothing, instead of customers buying clothes, The Empty Shop will encourage shoppers to become givers by offering clothes to the shop instead of taking them away.

In return, the shop is set to make a real event out of giving back by getting local fashion stylists and bloggers to turn second hand clothes into key looks for the season, all on display in what is set to be a rather upmarket space in Manchester Arndale's central square, just near Next. The space will then be emptied each evening with clothes going to a local homeless charity leaving The Empty shop ready to receive new donations again the following day.

As with all creativity, premature criticism can obviously stifle any idea, and hopefully, the above innovation in charitable giving will have a positive outcome.

However, from a NAM’s point of view, the reverse-thinking process may help by taking your 2014 objectives, considering the reverse for a moment, and see where it leads?

For instance:
- Reducing sales instead of going for growth
- Reducing instore space instead of…
- Reducing share, range, distribution, footprint in order to focus via concentration...
- Increasing cost via more creative investment

Scope for a little creativity before the 2014 fires flare up and become too distracting?

Fancy a new iPad at 95% discount? - the QuiBids penny-auction model

QuiBids is the world’s largest retail website that operates as a bidding fee auction, also known as a penny auction. The price of auctioned products increase by one QuiBids penny with each bid, which are equal to $0.60, and bidding doesn't start until there is only 5 minutes left in the auction. The final price are typically much lower than other auctions, but all bidders pay $0.60 each time they bid. Losers of the auction have the option of paying the retail price, minus the cost of their bids.

Their product selection runs from the latest Apple products - iPads, iPods, and MacBooks - to high definition televisions, gift cards to top retailers, and much more. To name a few recent sale prices of items like this, a New Apple iPad recently sold for £33.77, a Kindle Fire sold for £15.83, and a HP Laptop sold for £20.83.

For an auction winner, the true cost of an item won at auction is a bit higher than the final auction price because of the amount the auction winner spent bidding to win. But it’s typically modest, and even after bids, most winners save at least 75% off retail.

The OFT have some issues with some versions of the model and offer some pitfalls and offer advice here

There are obviously issues ref. the model’s similarity to a lottery, but with care, the penny auction - via sales to losers - can represent another route to consumer, and further dilution of trade concentration…..

Google voice search - the lowtech London billboard crossover?

Google wanted to change consumers' behaviour, and inject some wit and romance into a Google service that could feel cold and distant.

The solution: 
Hyper-relevant context. Google identified London landmarks, and placed relevant billboards nearby in a total of 150 different creative executions around the city. For example, a billboard that said "Ley-tist Skohrz" was placed outside Chelsea FC. Because the service is voice search, the words were written phonetically, drawing further attention, in one of the most media-saturated cities on the planet. More pic-examples here.

Why it won the Media Grand Prix:
The campaign combined the three fundamentals of advertising: technology, analytics and storytelling, with technology driving targeting driving briefing and strategy and eventually creative, a reverse of the normal sequence...

The result:
Google and Manning Gottlieb OMD shop in the U.K. won the Media Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2012

More importantly, voice search in London more than doubled. 

Amazon 30 mins delivery by DRONE - in Bezos dreams?

Jeff Bezos has announced the online retailer has secretly been testing drones that can delivery packages directly to people's doors.  However, the project is at least five years from reality due to still-to-be-determined FAA regulations.

As you know, an octocopter is a type of rotorcraft - or drone - that is powered by eight rotor helicopter blades. Each of the arms are operated by their own motor. For this reason they are designed and used to lift 'heavy' objects. It is also makes them less likely to breakdown if there is a problem with one of the blades. Amazon say their self-made octocopters will be able to carry packages weighing up to five pounds, which accounts for about 86% of the items the company delivers.

Whilst the drones may be a PR stunt, and selling books online seemed  a 'no-go' a few years ago, Jeff's drone-dreams may become a nightmare for competitors...

...leaving time for a few what-ifs for those that feel they can still stay in the game...?

Face and barcode scanning a little passe? Ground-Breaking project to brain-scan shoppers...

Dr Paul Mullins and Dr Helen Morgan from the School of Psychology put a shopper through the fMRI scanner.

Psychologists at Bangor University are to brain-scan supermarket-shoppers to test their reactions to promotions and special offers in a major cutting-edge project  with one of Europe’s leading shopping behaviour specialists.

The project, to be carried out jointly by UK-based SBXL and the respected School of Psychology, will ask selected shoppers to simulate an £80 grocery shop in a supermarket, while going through a £3m 20-ton medical fMRI scanner.

A full range of supermarket products are displayed on a screen in front of them and they are asked to make normal shopping choices from a shopping list while faced with a wide range or promotions and special offers. The aim is to identify which part of the brain is involved in making choices by measuring blood flow and brain activity.

Early research suggests that around 23 minutes into their shop, customers begin to make choices with the emotional part of their brain – which can only guess at value for money – rather than the cognitive part of the brain which is capable of computation and logical decision-making. Results also show that after 40 minutes – the time taken for a typical weekly shop – the brain gets tired and effectively shuts down, ceasing to form rational thoughts.

Previous SBXL research that the brain behaves illogically when faced with the sort of information overload that shoppers are faced with in a typical supermarket. Previous research has shown us that nearly 20 per cent of shoppers are likely to put special offers in their basket even if they are more expensive than the normal product, and we know that nearly half of shoppers ignore buy-one-get-one-free items and only choose one.

Given that approximately a quarter of all products on supermarket shelves are on some kind of offer or promotion, this indicates that many millions of pounds at stake in lost margins if the supermarkets are getting it wrong. SBXL estimates that supermarkets and brands consistently give away 23 per cent more margin than they need to.

Hopefully, the research will help suppliers and retailers get to a closer realisation and satisfaction of real shopper 'need', rather than 'want'...

In other words, although the shopper is behaving illogically in selecting a 'special offer' that is more expensive than the normal product, there is perhaps more mileage for the retailer in pointing out the shopper's 'error' than making a few pence extra on the 'mis-purchase'...

Alcohol update: the new poitín (poteen) subcategory

How poitín went from illegal moonshine to being sold in Tesco Ireland

Intensive catchup briefing for NAMs:

1. It is one of the most strongly alcoholic drinks on the planet. Homemade poitín can be anywhere between 50 and 90% alcohol by volume vs. average beer 4 to 6% and whiskey 40%. 
2. The first record of it is from the 6th century but it was illegal in Ireland for 300 years and was only legalised in 1997.
3. Purists may not like it but poitín is shedding its reputation as illegal moonshine and is for sale (legally) in shops and pubs around Ireland.

For those without DIY facilities, there are at least five companies in Ireland now selling poitín which can be bought in pubs and off-licences, while London cocktail bar Shebeen is selling eight different types of poitín, including one version made from potatoes in San Francisco. Irish company Coomara Irish Spirits recently made the biggest ever legal shipment of poitín to supermarket chain Tesco, which began stocking the spirit earlier this year.

NB. For those determined to try, the legal version of poitín is 40% and has been granted Geographical Indicative Status by the EU. As you know, this means that in the same way that champagne has to come from a certain area of France and Parmesan cheese can only come from a particular part of Italy, poitín can only come from Ireland.

NAM advice: i.e. Do read the label before you cannot.....
(For more exotic tastes, try Asian Snake Whiskey)

See it, snap it, buy it: the new way to shop online...

"We shop with our eyes, so why not search with a photo?" asks Jenny Griffiths, founder and CEO of Snap Fashion, the fashion search engine that uses pictures instead of words.

Her idea was born out of her frustration at trying and failing to find affordable equivalents to the designer clothes she found in fashion magazines. When regular search engines failed to quench her affordable fashion thirst - there are after all only so many ways you can describe an item of clothing to Google - the 26-year-old realised that her quest would be markedly easier if she could just submit a photo of the item she was searching for.

Snap Fashion obviously meets a shopper-need, but savvy NAMs will appreciate that there is a much bigger idea lurking here…

In other words, this is all about pattern and shape recognition. So anytime you see an ornament, poster, piece of furniture, hairstyle, gadget, or even a foreign-language version pack of a ‘well-known’ brand and ‘you don’t like to ask’, a simple pic will help you to find an affordable source..

In fact, all it would take is for a company called Amazon to adapt the software to their site to flesh out the real potential….

"clicks to bricks" - Online retailers move into the High Street

Rapha Cycle Club on Brewer Street, near Piccadilly Circus

"Retail observers have been significantly overestimating our use of online and digital technology for shopping - we like shopping in stores," says Nicole Flasch-Mihalko of LIM College, which carried out a survey with the National Retail Federation in the US.

A number of online retailers have taken the survey findings to heart....
For instance, Rapha, which started as an online business in 2004 selling high-performance cyclewear, opened its first store or Cycle Club in San Francisco in 2011. Now it also has branches in London, Osaka, New York and Sydney.

Rapha says its stores have been a big hit with customers, offering a showcase for its clothing but also acting as a place to absorb cycle culture - to drink coffee, join in organised cycle rides and watch major races on big screens.

For High Street landlords with vacant space to rent as well as online start-ups this trend is good news, says Ross Bailey, founder and chief executive of Appear Here. His firm brings together shop landlords and mainly e-commerce entrepreneurs, with the aim of making renting a pop-up or permanent physical shop easier and more flexible.

The key idea is online retailers - Ronliners -, with no baggage or no preconceived notion of what works in classic retailing, but especially with little to fear from the emergence of online, can focus on the shopper's experiential interaction with the product, secure in the knowledge that they have already secured the ongoing deal...

...while their traditional competitors focus on restricting access to the instore wifi... 

A shelf nearby is watching you....

According to The Washington Post, Mondelez, says it's planning to debut a grocery shelf in 2015 that comes equipped with sensors to determine the age and sex of passing customers. Hooked up to Microsoft's Kinect controller, the shelf will be able to use basic facial features like bone structure to build a profile of a potential snacker.

While pictures of your actual face won't be stored, aggregate demographic data from thousands of transactions will be used to funnel appropriate products for impulse purchase....

It remains to be seen whether the resulting privacy-agro will the negate the obvious advantages of shelf optimisation...

A market segment of one consumer....how the market for consumer durables is adapting to real demand...

For the past 100 years, we have been taught to think that most things we use are best made in quantity on a production line.

Companies remained stuck in the 20th Century when life was moving on. Organisations of all kinds still saw their users through the lens of the mass market philosophy. They looked on their users as groups of people with similar desires. They missed the ability of emerging countries to do better.

In fact western companies simply cannot compete with the developing country producers who are using the mass production model faster and cheaper.

To compete on something other than price, companies based in the West will have to escape from their preoccupation with mass markets and fulfil the precisely-defined individual requirements of their individual customers with breathtaking speed and efficiency, in an environment termed the ‘heartbeat economy’ by Peter Day.

Joe Pine, an American management writer who has become the prophet of what is known as mass customisation, put it like this: "Customers don't want a choice. They want exactly what they want."

Thus the savvy consumer morphs into an ‘individual’ demanding a bespoke solution, and is already satisfying that appetite via the ‘tailor-makeable’ attributes of the smartphone…with 3D printing awaiting applications in other product areas.

Obviously, satisfying this ‘bespoke’ appetite has started and will develop with consumer durables, but once ‘the’ consumer experiences and develops a taste for individual treatment, do you really believe that FMCG can remain ‘as is’?

A fundamental challenge to all of our thinking…?

Converting BOGOFs to BOGOFs: Buy-One-GIVE-One Free?

Students from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Clifton have developed a clever solution aimed at reducing the mountains of grub going to waste every year, while helping deliver more meals to food banks. They say online supermarket customers should be given the option of sending one of their BOGOF items directly to food banks.

In fact, given that those who have to resort to food banks are also in need of all the other aids to wellbeing that we promote in our advertising, why not extend the idea to all online BOGOFs, and really make a difference…?

Optimised multi-device access: helping people buy?

Following an era of making products available and selling to potential shoppers, perhaps it is time for retailers to help people buy?

This means adjusting the dimensions of the shop ‘doorway’ to enable access in whatever way people want to buy. In fact, latest research from Venda reveals that retailers are failing to adapt to the shifts in online consumption and purchasing habits. In fact, just one of the UK’s top 50 most visited retail sites, Currys, currently hosts a responsive website – where content on the site automatically adapts according to the device being used.

Consumers now use phones, televisions, laptops, desktops and soon even glasses and watches to access their favourite brands and retailers. In fact, the wearable device market has been tipped to ship 485 million devices annually by 2018.

But how can we deliver a consistent user experience across such a range of devices and capabilities? The answer lies in a suite of technology and design techniques which are collectively referred to as Responsive Web Design.

With the actual site content and functionality being determined by the dimensions and capabilities of the device being used, customers are kept more engaged by no longer having to navigate a site designed for desktop PCs. With consideration also given to the speed of the device and its connection, further improving user experience, the solution encourages repeat site visits, higher conversion rates and ultimately sales.

Operating on a single responsive site, retailers’ SEO authority is maximised, with all mobile traffic being directed to one consistent URL, allowing customers to share links knowing that, when viewed, the content will always be optimised for the viewing device and not the device the link was shared from.

Not just retailers..
Given that a supplier’s site can be the first port of call for a curious consumer, are brand owners missing a trick in serving up one dimensional access, translating into ‘take-it-or-leave-it' for the savvy visitor?