entrepreneurs

Your Allies spoke to Collaborative Consumption Startup Ecomodo co-founder Tracy Currer as part of its entrepreneurship series because their online community marketplace stands out as a well thought through platform bringing people, businesses and local institutions together to share under-used items, space or even skills. We applaud their crusade against the status quo and towards a better use of our finite resources.

This article is part of Your Allies’s entrepreneurship series. We profile entrepreneurs and their business concepts and give our view on their marketing approach. There’s always something to learn from real startup and business growth experience!

What was your motivation to set up Ecomodo and what mission have you set yourself with it?

“Our motivation was 2-fold: Firstly, Meriel, my co-founder, had a short term need for a tool. Buying a new one was expensive and wasteful when many elsewhere would be sitting idle … but how to find them?

And secondly, having worked in the product development industry for many years, I hope to change consumer behaviour through helping people to think of household products as assets and not just throw-away. In turn, Ecomodo can start to shift manufacturers away from disposability by increasing the market for robustness.

Ultimately, we want Ecomodo to be the first place people turn to when they have an occasional need for goods, skills or spaces. Through increasing access to resources, Ecomodo provides new opportunities whilst decreasing the environmental impact of the lives we aspire to.”

Your Allies says…We are big proponents of sensible concepts such as cradle-to-cradle and the Circular Economy that promote smarter product design and better use of resources. Ecomodo’s service makes sense for consumers and for businesses and benefits a more sustainable use of existing shareable items.

What makes Ecomodo unique, unlike any direct and indirect competitors?

“Our biggest competitors are “inertia” and the “status quo”. Changing the way people choose to do the things is never an easy task. With that said, from our initial research, we built Ecomodo around six core components to elicit trust, motivate diverse audiences and provide a solid legal framework alongside a sustainable business model that sets Ecomodo apart from other start-ups in this field.

1. A combination of gifting, micro-enterprise and fundraising provides a unique motivation model to drive critical mass across diverse audiences so the density of items in a local area becomes truly compelling.

2. Lending circles enable individuals to choose to restrict their lending to circles of people with whom they have a basis for trust or wish to lend to (e.g. friends, neighbourhoods, school, workplaces, community groups).

3. Our new Insurance model (delivered through RSA) enables lenders to opt for insurance cover for accidental loss or damage of goods.

4. Fuzzy location specification protects members’ location whilst enabling effective local searching.

5. Our scalable infrastructure and intuitive interface hides the underlying legal, technical and functional complexity making Ecomodo easy to use.

6. Feedback and ratings support lenders’ and borrowers’ decisions and builds visible social capital.”

Your Allies says… It’s very interesting to see Ecomodo view learned consumer behaviour as a competitor. What this tells us is how seriously they take the challenge of changing the status quo. As with any business concept, research into customer needs and expectations is key. Ecomodo has used its customer insight to tackle the issue of people feeling confident in using a peer-to-peer marketplace with their distinct formula: a combination of monetary incentives such as earning an additional income and charitable giving plus trust-building through closed lending groups, privacy protection, user ratings plus security in the form of optional insurance.

What is your business strategy to accomplish your mission?

“To achieve our mission we have a 2-tiered plan.

1) Establish our peer-to-peer market
Our aim is to provide operational excellence and work with a host of organisations to inspire and extend our reach. We plan to enhance Ecomodo to provide the most efficient and secure way for anyone to lend idle resources directly to others throughout all levels of our society. In turn bringing countless benefits and opportunities to our citizens, neighbourhoods, schools, charities, councils, business and organisations to live and work in a more economic and environmental way.

2) Evolve and expand Ecomodo’s capabilities to enable B2C and B2B commerce.

For example: A recycling officer seeing the cost saving for collecting pre-shredded garden waste, with minimum effort creates a customised service to lend shredders directly and promotes other shredders locally available whilst keeping their time and budget for education and communications. (B2C)

Or established businesses sharing their spaces, skills and equipment to small start-ups locally as they struggle to make ends meet at the beginning. (B2B)”

Your Allies says… A smart and systematic approach to integrating all potential market participants over time.

What marketing strategy have you put in place to reach your business objectives?

“At the core of our marketing approach is the potential for viral growth. Utilising ‘real world communities’ (such as workplaces, community groups etc) drives familiarity and trust at a very local level and promotes take-up.
With regard to price, a number of our competitors in the collaborative consumption arena, in order to monetise their services, are opting for users to pay upfront for adding items to lend or a subscription for use. We believe for a peer-to-peer service this creates a huge barrier to entry. For individuals to use Ecomodo, it is free to join and add items to lend, and therefore will be a cheaper option than our competitors. There are great potential cost efficiencies as we reach scale that will enable us to monitor our fees levels to stay competitive.

For us 3 other P’s are key: Performance, Personalisation & Pilots.

Performance: Ecomodo provides the most complete, peer-to-peer, transactional, lending and borrowing service in the world. No competitor offers the range of features Ecomodo has to motivate and drive confidence in lending and borrowing goods, skills and spaces.Our focus is on efficiency & trust.

Personalisation: From the ability for users to control who can request to borrow their stuff (now) to white labeled experiences – powered by Ecomodo (future), personalisation is key to enabling confident lending of idle resources.

Pilots: Our aim is to conduct a series focused pilots in order to find effective ways to market Ecomodo and demonstrate uptake.”

Your Allies says… Ecomodo is applying word-of-mouth and testing what works best, two typical start-up approaches that some traditional businesses have learned from. Economies of scale however is a traditional business strategy, here applied in a P2P/B2P environment to facilitate a competitive pricing strategy that not only helps secure their market position but also removes an entry barrier for users – an additional significant differentiator in addition to the six core components described above. We see their product strategy as being based on excellence on many levels: biggest range of features, focus on ease of use and personalisation options to instil trust and confidence in users.

What was your biggest challenge in developing Ecomodo so far and how did you overcome it?

“As I described before the biggest barriers are trust & inertia. With regard to both of these we designed Ecomodo in ways to overcome them, working within a very limited budget. We combat trust issues with lending circles to automatically control who can borrow stuff, security deposits, insurance and reputation building through feedback. To overcome inertia we enable people to lend not just for free but to make some money or fundraise for a charity.”

Your Allies says… We like Ecomodo’s consistent focus on their users and persistent attention to the big challenges (trust, inertia) in front of them. We found 404 items to borrow near our office address, from an iPad with proceeds going to The Prince’s Trust to a free paper shredder, and thousands more near our home addresses. This goes to show that Ecomodo have made great inroads in establishing a solid base of accessible items. Your Allies will follow Ecomodo’s further development, use the platform as much as possible and wish them the best of success in changing the status quo!

Ready for even more inspiration from real-life business experience? Check out the complete entrepreneurship series!

Photo credit: CC BY Markus Spiske / raumrot.com, published unchanged

This article is part of Your Allies’s entrepreneurship series. We profile entrepreneurs and their business concepts which set out to do good for people or businesses and give our view on their marketing approach. There’s always something to learn from real startup and business growth experience!

What was your motivation to set up Skilio and what mission have you set yourself with it?

“We got the inspiration for Skilio living in rural France where many very talented people were facing financial difficulty due to a lack of employment and / or access to skills. Both my co-founder, Erwan Bezie, and I are passionate about finding innovative and surprising ways to use technology and we wanted to combine this with creating something that has real worth to the larger community. At a time of financial belt tightening for many people, building a tool that lets members easily earn money from sharing their expertise makes real sense.

Our mission is to create a truly collaborative knowledge platform, where each individual can have access to learning at a price they can afford, from anywhere in the world. A marketplace where members can not only easily earn money sharing their knowledge, but also gain recognition and build community around their expertise. and be the go to marketplace for live skill sharing.”

Your Allies says… Entrepreneurs who themselves have experienced the need or issue their business sets out to address have the advantage of being able to apply that first-hand experience to their business. To some extent they can also act as their own focus group, before testing their assumptions with others. Skilio illustrates how a personal experience or need, plus passion, drive and vision all play a part in growing a concept into a successful business.

Gelling the peer-to-peer model with technology tailored to their niche to give consumers an affordable service, whilst simultaneously helping skill sharers earn money, is a smart move. All the more so given today’s economic climate.

What makes Skilio unique, unlike any direct and indirect competitors?

“What makes us different is that we believe everyone has a skill to share, that you don’t have to be a professional teacher to bring value and learning to an entire community and inspire them. We actually try to avoid the terms ‘teachers’ and ‘students’ unlike other competitors. The thing is, we are not just about ‘education’ – we are about people sharing their knowledge, in whatever way works best for them. That could be via teaching of course, but also via mentoring, consulting, a one off conversation, a regular meetup.”

We allow anyone to join Skilio, list the Skill they can share and the skills they want to learn, and get interacting instantly. We don’t force people to go through a lengthy verification process prior to sharing their expertise. Instead, the community effectively self regulates, by leaving feedback on the session and person presenting it. Just like on eBay for example, people are both careful to deliver good sessions, and keen to bump up the number of ratings they have.”

Your Allies says… An inclusive marketplace like Skilio’s opens up a far wider audience than those networks asking for formal teaching qualifications from its members. Essentially any skill can be offered which may mean theirs is the only place where certain skills can be found. Making it easy for skill sharers to build their reputation rather than jump through hoops or demanding official certification, is another interesting move. Social reputation is only likely to grow in terms of value and importance.

What is your business strategy to accomplish that mission?

“Right from the moment a member signs up, we ask them what they want to share and what they want to learn, so immediately they become both Knowledge Sharer and Knowledge Seeker. This means that to a certain degree the categories begin to self populate and we have a wide pool of skills available. However, simultaneously to this, we work closely with key target areas and their networks, to stimulate community in certain categories and get them to a point where they are self sustaining before moving on to the next one.”

Your Allies says… This focus on listening to customers is something businesses can rarely do enough of. Best practice is then putting those learnings into action, whilst continuing to build and harness that community. The smart startups will realise they may be in a better position to react quickly, as they’re nimbler than more established corporates.

What marketing strategy have you put in place to reach your business objectives?

“Our marketing comes largely down to us being very resourceful, as we are a bootstrapped startup. Naturally we do things like integrate a members social media accounts with our platform to enable their Skilio activity to feedback to their other social networks; we look for partnerships such as Global Sharing Day to support like minded businesses whilst also expanding our user reach; we run hands on introduction to Skilio sessions in Business Libraries across London etc.

Primarily however, we pinpoint which are the largest networks within our target categories, and work closely with them in exchange for access to their community. We help network tutors and mentors to run sessions to encourage new members, and then educate and retrain the new community members from passive to active participation. We work hard on developing loyalty and also bring on high profile speakers.”

Your Allies says… Every startup knows it needs to make the most of its precious, restrained resources. Taking partner marketing seriously, and doing it well, can give the boost to credibility and reach a startup really needs.

What was your biggest challenge in developing Skilio so far and how did you overcome it?

“One of the big challenges is getting people to overcome initial nerves about appearing live on webcam to other people from across the Globe and talk about their chosen subject. Its a little nerve wracking for some, as it’s a totally new way of doing things and you are very much visible and ‘out there’. So we spend quite a bit of time handholding community members through setting up sessions, giving them advice on how to run their webinars and so on. Its very effective, and whilst it is not really scalable, it does result in confident users, who become passionate about what we are doing and themselves act as brand evangelists, educating other members in turn.”

Your Allies’s final word… A challenge when introducing a new concept to a traditional marketplace is that you’re asking customers to change their behaviour in some way. Being prepared to address such a hurdle, as Skilio does, by coaching your audience and supporting them on their journey is a must. Failure to do so can result in appealing to the early adopters and missing out on the potential elsewhere. Turning users from unsure or skeptical to brand champions means something is working, and working well. That’s one of the many reasons we think Skilio has such an exciting future ahead.

Ready for even more inspiration from real-life business experience? Check out the complete entrepreneurship series!

Their mission is to capture a portion of the market from the incumbent corporate self storage companies (Big Yellow, Shurgard, Safestore etc) by offering a good value, neighbourhood based alternative solution. And we like their idea of making better use of private storage options.

This article is part of Your Allies’s entrepreneurship series. We profile entrepreneurs and their business concepts which set out to do good for people or businesses and give our view on their marketing approach. There’s always something to learn from real start-up and business growth experience!

What was your motivation to set up Store Next Door?

“My personal motivation is both from a business perspective (after a career in the media and tech I’ve been working with other startups in a VC firm and have been keen to give it a go myself!) but also from being a big fan and participant of the ‘sharing economy’. Dom Moorhouse, our MD, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, was inspired by seeing Rachel Botsman speak at the Wired conference last year.”

What makes storenextdoor.com unique?

“The website connects people with space (we call them the Badgers) to people who need storage (known as the Squirrels)! Once a Badger and Squirrel are matched the site provides a legal contract, a secure transaction platform and insurance to cover both parties for the duration of the contract.

We are the only peer-to-peer self storage company currently offering insurance as part of the deal. Having looked at the ‘collaborative consumption’ business landscape very closely we decided that the insurance package would not only differentiate us as a business but be the key to success in the self storage space.”

Your Allies says… addressing a key user concern head-on, in this case the security of stored goods, and offering a solution through insurance no other competitor offers provides a solid differentiator. Of course it’s going to be key to keep a close eye on the market and be prepared for when a competitor emulates what sets you apart now.

Quite the challenge, as they’ll want to avoid a situation where he who scales up fastest takes market leader position. This situation is usually fought out through reaching and converting as many users as fast as possible – often at the expense of profit, requiring increased marketing budgets. Challenges any savvy entrepreneur will have planned for.

What is your business model?

Storenextdoor.com makes money through taking a fixed percentage of the revenue from the storage contract on an ongoing basis.

What marketing strategy have you put in place to reach your business objectives?

“In order to be successful Store Next Door needs to reach critical mass in terms of people who have space, and people that need space in any one area. As much as possible we need to operate on a truly local level as our business model is built (via the internet) on neighbourhood based relationships. Our key messages are: Good value, Local, Safe and Neighbourly. We are combining old school marketing (door knocking, leafleting, local press) with a targeted online and social media campaign. The big challenge, as with all peer to peer companies, is that we need to appeal to two distinct groups people at the same time but with slightly different versions of the same idea – which is why we came up with the Badgers and the Squirrels!”

Your Allies says… we sympathise with this double-whopper challenge of scaling up a user base fast and on a local level. Feet on the street and local communication options plus targeting relevant content at the right people is a pragmatic, integrated and sensible approach. However, engaging local communities requires resource, time and dedication. A strong partner network can help bridge gaps where you don’t have enough resource available, plus their community reach helps multiply yours. We really like the Badgers and Squirrels metaphor since it transports the basic idea of users roles in this peer-to-peer scenario from in a lovely, whimsical way.

What was your biggest challenge in developing storenextdoor.com so far and how did you overcome it?

“Dom, Dan and I have all worked on big projects and launches in our careers and we wanted to set the bar high for ourselves with our own project – so it has been hard work as we are a small team!
Saying, that it’s been a really enjoyable journey to get to launch and exciting to be here.

As a marketer, I’m under no illusion about the challenge of launching a new consumer brand in a relatively new space. Although the ‘sharing economy’ is gaining ground and there are some great companies paving the way, it’s still one that takes a bit of explaining… and this week as I’ve been out on the streets with my leaflets I’ve been doing quite a lot of that!”

Your Allies says… we know just what Store Next Door are talking about from our own experience. The benefit of a small tight-knit team is the unity and power it can bring to the business idea and its execution. We believe wholeheartedly this is a crucial ingredient for a new business to succeed. The fact that she is so close to their target group explaining the concept of Store Next Door is a real advantage (though her feet may tell a different story). They’ll know exactly how to adapt their communication and other elements of their offer to fit user needs.

We wish them the best of success with Store Next Door!

Ready for even more inspiration from real-life business experience? Check out the complete entrepreneurship series!

Photo credit: Ryan McGuire / gratisography.com, published unchanged