
Umbrella-sharing startup loses most of its 300,000 umbrellas in its first weeks - danso
http://shanghaiist.com/2017/07/10/umbrella-sharing-fail.php
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wil421
Why are they called sharing companies? You are renting things. Sharing is when
I give my neighbor something or let them borrow my tools.

It seems all companies are wanting customers to lease or rent their products
nowadays. Cars leases, cellphone installment plans, Spotify/Apple
Music/Pandora, SaaS products, renting instead of buying homes...

What happened to ownership? I feel the consumers always loose money and only
gain temporary convenience. Yet I still "rent" some things regardless of my
thoughts, it's the only "better" option in some cases.

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bdibs
The cases for which these companies are made are usually the "better" ones.

I'm not going to buy a new car or house every time I fly into D.C. or Los
Angeles for the week, I'll just use Airbnb or Uber.

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IE6
According to the article they are charging 19 yuen for something that costs
(presumably at scale) 60 yuen and have no real way to ensure they don't get
stolen this way. Not sure what they really expect :\

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wodenokoto
No they are not. It is a deposit. The price is 1 yuan per hour. (50 jiao per
half hour)

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beagle3
A deposit is something you get back when you return the item. A price/cost is
something you never get back because you do not return the item.

Regardless of what the credit card statement or receipt says, you pay 20 yuens
and get to keep an umbrella, so "price" is the right description.

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sqeaky
I am not sure how they thought this would succeed, unless they plan on
pivoting into the most distributed umbrella retailer ever.

Umbrellas are too cheap to defend with technology. Something like GPS wouldn't
help recover umbrellas in a cost effective way, maybe in some future where GPS
receives are a penny apiece, but not today.

The only way I see to deal with the problem of people keeping umbrellas is to
bill people who take them. Get their credit card or other payment information
and let them know when they spend their quarter, or whatever, on the umbrella
that if they don't return by a certain time it they will be charged for it.
Then you just accept that you are an online retailer with a storefront of
everywhere.

Even then this presumes that somehow the umbrella is unusable without
registering, how do you make that happen? I will just presumed they solved
that one.

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jimmies
>Umbrellas are too cheap to defend with technology. Something like GPS
wouldn't help recover umbrellas in a cost effective way, maybe in some future
where GPS receives are a penny apiece, but not today.

I wouldn't go as far as locating them, but keeping track of them using
technology seems feasible. How about having an NFC tag implanted to the
umbrella to make sure it is returned?

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chii
I bet you'll find that ppl will rip out the chip and return just that, unless
there's a human checking the returns.

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sqeaky
Do you think there are enough disreputable people to make that a problem?

I mean it chip has a unique ID or its not doing its job, and you get the
payment info of each user. There are incentives to not stealing these things,
so you are really just worried about vandals and immoral penny penchers trying
to skirt the system.

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anotheryou
wow "14 other competitors in the umbrella-sharing industry"

So how do the others do it?

I could only imagine some simple number lock unlockable when you scan a QR and
pay a deposite, but I don't know how return could work. Maybe it could be
verified by someone else unlocking it from the same place you claimed to have
left it? And if nobody ever unlocks it, because you just took it home, it
flags you as a thief after 3 times?

Or slightly snowbally: you pay 5 dollars to get an umbrella with a number lock
and only get it back when someone else rents it again. This way you have to
make sure to put it where it gets used.

Ah, dedicated stations of course work, but take away some of the organic
simple nature [http://umbracity.com/](http://umbracity.com/)

edit: one with number locks: (I wonder how the return works)
[https://www.shanghaiexpat.com/news/umbrella-sharing-comes-
sh...](https://www.shanghaiexpat.com/news/umbrella-sharing-comes-shanghai)

~~~
devonkim
That kind of system seems similar to how Aldi encourages people to return
shopping carts with quarter "deposits" or let others put them back for a
quarter.

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anotheryou
But you have to plug it in to the others to get your coun back and there is
one initial dock dongle thingy.

Also many supermarkets (at least in germany) start doing some weirdly accurate
geofencing with automatic breaks on the carts. I wonder how it actually works.
edit:
[http://www.gatekeepersystems.com/sol_cc_cc_how_it_works.php](http://www.gatekeepersystems.com/sol_cc_cc_how_it_works.php)

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eip
Who funded that idea? Was there like a special Olympics of startups? That is a
seriously stupid idea.

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onetokeoverthe
Some countries specialize in seriously stupid.

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joelinuxyx
At first I thought it was an onion article; its sad for the business but funny
headline.

