Distribution: Sampling at Home

Various “tasting clubs” let you try new and exciting items at home - but the overhead of transport costs restricts these to more expensive items at present.

This section discusses:

Existing Provision

What

One can already have a wide range of items delivered to your door for you to sample or use temporarily at home. These include:

How

Many of these schemes take the form of a “club” or “society” but most are sophisticated retail operations.

Volume and Frequency

Items are typically dispatched monthly or quarterly.

Financial Model

Clubs or schemes that appear to be “free” often require a minimum term of membership and/or a guaranteed level of purchases. Such “book clubs” and the like have a dubious reputation as they often make it difficult to leave or to reject deliveries that you are deemed to have failed to “opt out” of.

The cost of delivery must represent a significant proportion of the margin of many of these operations - and one of the reasons why they need to be so aggressive at pushing a minimum value of sales through each “member”.

Providers

Mostly national organisations with significant delivery overheads.

Trends

Browsing online is now a real alternative to reviewing items sent on “sale or return”. Most people are also getting wise to the techniques employed by such organisations.

With Localnet

What

By reducing the cost of distribution within a local area, and making this option open even to small-scale producers, it becomes much more viable to send a small sample to a number of people in the area - without then having to twist their arms up their backs because you are desperate to recover substantial sunk costs. The goal here is to enable small scale, local production - and to avoid waste that would otherwise happen for goods that rapidly go off if a market is not found rapidly for them.

Local growers, producers, cooks and artisans should be able to send small samples of their wares to local residents at very low cost. As these are only going to travel a few miles and only need to survive a few hours, a whole range of lower values items. These could include:

How

Samples of food could, for example, be included in the breakfast goods compartment of the PaperBox used to send post, papers and breakfast items out each morning. There would be little to no extra work involved in delivering twenty or thirty boxes that had a free sample slice of blackberry and apple pie. There need be no wasted paper or printing involved. Anyone who liked the pie simply needs to touch the “Tell me more” button on their localnet touchpad. It will know where the sample came from and put you one touch away from ordering a whole pie.

If you didn't like it, you can leave feedback for the producer - who may then tweak their recipe to suit your tastes.

Other items such as hand-knitted garments could be sent out on a sale or return basis and potentially routed automatically from one potential customer to the next.

As with so many other services, this would not justify infrastructure on its own. Just setting up and administering the billing would make it a non-starter for the pensioner with two pear trees that drop thousands of perfectly tasty pears on the ground most years. Being able to use this service as part of the localnet system though, he can give the localnet driver a bag of a hundred pears to pop into people's boxes. The next morning, I guarantee ten or twenty recipients will order a bag or more if it's just a matter of touching the thumbs up sign they'll see on their localnet touchpad that morning. They don't have to find the 50p or pound that these cost and the pensioner doesn't have to collect it - these micro-payments are all done “under the hood” and just appear as a line item on their detailed statements.

Volume and Frequency

This service should not be overdone but anything up to perhaps one item per resident per week would act as a pleasant surprise in one's morning deliveries. Even if only a small percentage of these lead to an order, it could be a worthwhile model for many.

Financial Model

If localnet is intending to charge the suppliers of these goods to distribute their items when they are sold. It may be possible to offer the sampling service for free. Few customers will object to receiving a small sample of something they hadn't asked for - though they can opt out should they wish.

Providers

Local farmers, butchers and bakers are the most likely trailblazers in this area as they will often have surplus produce that would have been thrown away had it not been possible to send it out as free samples to potential new customers. Those with fruit trees or substantial allotments but no regular customer base would also benefit.

Evolution

It will take time for residents to recognise and then exploit the wide range of opportunities localnet gives them. Expect to see residents developing a wide range of skills that allow them to supplement their income by working at home and distributing their goods via localnet.

 

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

Expensive goods that can bear significant transport costs.

 Much wider range of goods including those with much lower ticket price, shorter shelf life and travel tolerance. +3
Frequency

Typically monthly or quarterly.

 Possible daily. Aim for a sample a week. +2

 
Security Not applicable. Not applicable. 0
Convenience Tend to force commitment and require opt-out. Opt in only. Ordering, feedback and payment through localnet. +3
Cost Delivery costs significant. Often delivered alone. Always sharing transport with other items, never requiring extra transport. +3
Quality National transport typically taking days. Much fresher, hours or overnight. +2
Carbon Footprint Delivery van just for the sample unless in normal post. Always shared delivery. +2
Time Ordering, opting out, paying separate bill. Couple of taps on touchpad. +3
Resources Used Packaging, outer wrappings enough for national post or courier. Light outer as delivered in robust reusable box. +2
Reuse & Recycling Long round-trip time means little use for short-dated items. Same or next day response allows gluts to be distributed before going off. +3
Landfill Waste Non-recyclable packaging often included to protect items in transit. Less of this needed for local hop only. +2
Other Differentiators Opt-out scams give bad reputation.

Opt-in only and local flavour overcomes this. Encourages micro-production and reduces food waste.

 +3

Services