End-to-end Delivery: Local Market

We are seeing a significant move towards the use of local produce in our shops and supermarkets. Localnet would allow this concept to extend to every one of us who occasionally has something we have too much or don't need any more.

This section discusses:

Existing Provision

What

Here we are considering a wide range of items that could be bought and sold within a local area - say a ten mile radius. Shops will often sell high value, bulky items such as furniture with free local delivery but this does not cost in for smaller items. Because there is no cost effective local delivery mechanism, little attempt is made to encourage local buyers outside of the few traditional “locally sourced” items such as:

How

Locally sourced farm produce is making a welcome comeback to our shops. The reduced “food miles” it has travelled should make it, other things being equal, “greener” than buying food produced further away. While contracts with local shops work for serious farmers, they are not an option for those of us with allotments or vegetable gardens. A roadside stall or, for the more serious, a presence at a farmers' market are the traditional approaches to trying to recoup some money when a temporary glut of something leaves us with more than we can eat or share with our neighbours.

Classified ads in local newspapers or specialist free papers are the traditional route to selling one-off items - such as a baby buggy that's no longer needed. The costs of transport the item to the seller or having the seller collect make this route inefficient for smaller, cheaper items. The need to describe and/or photograph each item also acts as a disincentive against selling the cheaper items this way. There is a “hassle” threshold which results in items below a certain value (net of describing, packing and transport time and costs) being thrown away instead of sold on - and hence reused.

Locally sourced items can be found on internet auction sites, such as eBay but one has to wade through items from all over the country to find something within easy reach. Even if an item does happen to come from just down the road, the postage and packing charge rarely takes account of this unless you come and pick it up yourself - which is not the most environmentally friendly way of getting a small item to your house.

Perhaps the best model of local(ish) trading is the “Boot Fair”. Several dozen sellers converge on a field or car park and sell anything they don't want any more from a stall by the boot of their car. Sellers include ordinary householders having a clear-out as well as serious “market-traders” (some of whom even sell genuine items!)

The boot fair's close relative the American “Yard Sale” is a much smaller affair with typically a single seller but basically the same premise.

Volume and Frequency

We all generate a steady stream of things that could or should be of more use and hence value to others than to ourselves. Whether these are clothes that children have grown out of (or our growing waistlines have made unwearable); a temporary surplus of beans from our vegetable garden; a book we've finished; a spare banana loaf we made to use up the dying bananas or whatever.

If a low hassle, low cost means of matching sellers to buyers within the local area were combined with cheap and frequent collections and deliveries, the range of items we'd trade locally could increase dramatically.

Financial Model

This varies widely according to the types of goods but typically includes the following elements:

Providers

These include:

Trends

People are certainly becoming more conscious of the distance their food has travelled.

The ongoing rise of petrol prices does mean that people think increasingly seriously about the cost of fuel before committing to a long round trip to buy or collect something.

With Localnet

What

Localnet proactively encourages the local trading - between residents as well as from local suppliers - of pretty much the same range of items that you would find at a local boot fair. These include the following categories of goods: Clothing, Plants, Home Cooking, or “other”. These categories include:

Clothing that we no longer need or have made to sell:

Plants from our own gardens and allotments:

Home Cooking that we make for the income or simply to use up some produce:

”Other” or “Miscellaneous” picks up everything else:

 

How

The relatively informal, low-cost and low stress approach of a boot fair is something that works well for these sales - many of which are ad hoc, occasional transactions but which others can actually turn into a steady and useful source of income.

Localnet acts as an online boot fair. Each “stall holder” - whether that's a resident selling for one week of the year or a business trading permanently - can have a “stall” picture on the local market page of their local area's user interface. The process for advertising items should be as lightweight as possible but will be similar to putting an item on an eBay or local classified.

When items are bought, they can (mostly) be placed inside an  OmniBox and collected on the next round - typically reaching their destination the same day or following morning.

Because all payments and income are through your main localnet account, buying something for a pound does not generate an additional bill to pay or cheque to post. It simply appears as a line item in the detail of your next monthly invoice and your purchases are netted off against any sales you make. This takes some of the hassle out of the process and reduces the price threshold for items below which people won't bother to use the system.

Other benefits of the localnet approach include:

Volume and Frequency

With the increased range of items that localnet allows one to trade easily within the neighbourhood, most residents are likely to use this service as either a buyer or seller on perhaps an average of a weekly basis. Those who want to make an income from it will trade daily.

Financial Model

For many of these items, the value is fairly low. Hence the transport and advertising cost - and time needed to do so - needs to be at or close to zero, As with laundry, the transport of these items is rarely terribly time critical and for most people would just entail an additional box as part of another delivery or collection once a week or so. Hence a free transport option could be offered where the goods are carried in space that would otherwise have been empty. This works well for the ad hoc or occasional use that all of us would make of the service from time to time - and further helps to encourage reuse of goods rather than scrapping them and having to deal not only with the waste but also the use of resources to make a new one.

Those who trade more seriously on the system would be expected to at least cover the costs of the transport since the significant number of deliveries to or from their premises will require additional visits from the delivery vans and/or provision of stacks of empty  OmniBox for them to fill. These costs should still be significantly lower than existing post or courier services and should certainly be made more attractive than the alternative of taking them to customers' houses oneself

Providers

Every resident becomes an occasional provider of local goods to some degree. Many will be frequent users and may even make their living this way - or at least contribute significantly to their income.

Evolution

The cheap and ready availability of both a market and delivery system could make a number of other local enterprises viable. It could certainly encourage a move back to “home” cooking - though the “home” is one in your neighbourhood with an expert cook rather than your own.

 

Comparison

The table below assesses the impact of localnet on this service on a scale of -5 to +5 (details here)

  Existing services As part of localnet Score
Scope Many things can be sold locally but routes to market are limited and cost of transport is prohibitive for low value items. Anything that will fit in an  OmniBox. +2
Frequency Boot fairs are typically “occasional”. Markets often weekly. Any time any day.

+2
Security Provenance of traded items at boot fair often dubious. Better traceability as address of traders known. +1
Convenience Need to submit, sell, take payment, deliver or collect. Simplified process. Reduced packaging. Payment, delivery and collection rolled into overall monthly statement. +2
Cost Highly variable but often enough to put off selling small volumes of low cost items. Zero to ad hoc sellers. Cheaper than current alternatives for traders. +1
Quality Variable. Market traders not always selling genuine goods. Sale or return service gives buyer confidence. +1
Carbon Footprint Whether the person or the goods travel, it is rarely efficient. Shared transport overhead amongst other deliveries. +1
Time Travelling to collect or to visit a boot fair. Very little effort required, +1
Resources Used Every item sold on is one less new item to be made. Many more items will be passed on if it is made easier and cheaper +3
Reuse & Recycling Not applicable. Not applicable. 0
Landfill Waste Every item sold on is one less going to landfill. Many more items will be reused instead of dumped. +2
Other Differentiators Boot fairs are more fun to wander round and browse through stuff - as long as it isn't raining. Gives many residents new opportunities to work from home and exploit their skills and resources (e.g. land). +1

Services