Customers Fail To Return 300,000 Umbrellas

Many of us are familiar with schemes in large cities, where you can hire a bike from a pick up point, cycle to your destination and drop the bike at another location. You will see such schemes in London for instance. Using a similar business approach, a Chinese firm began offering an "umbrella" sharing programme, where the locals could pick up a brolly at a bus station or an entrance to a subway. However the plan has backfired, for the majority of the umbrellas were never returned, leaving the company with hardly any stock to meet customer requirements.

The business known as "Sharing E Umbrella's", Chief Executive Zhao Shuping said his venture was inspired by the many share schemes we see around the world, believing that anything could now be shared.

However, when the company went live, people either forgot to return the umbrellas or simply decided to keep them.

Umbrellas are unlocked using a GPS system, which dispatched a code to the users mobile phone. The cost is around 2.5 baht per 30 minutes and the customer can use the umbrella for as long as they required it. But with no apparent penalty for failing to return the umbrellas, customers have no incentive to bring them back.

Mr. Shuping added that money is earned through advertising on the umbrellas.

So far the cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Nanchang have benefited from what has become "free" umbrellas but this hasn't persuaded the company to stop. The chief executive plans to roll out more umbrellas across China.

So far, the company has lost 300,000 umbrellas. Let us hope the advertising charges outweigh the cost of the umbrella by a large margin!

Source: Sky News