Unpackaged help Abel and Cole to launch first-of-its-kind refill delivery service!
For the last few months we have been supporting Abel & Cole in the development of a direct to home ‘reusables’ service – which is now in beta testing, before being made available to all their customers at the end of Feb.
As you probably know Abel & Cole are an organic home delivery company – originally focused on weekly fruit & veg boxes, now supplying hundreds of grocery items to thousands of customers each week in cardboard boxes, each of which is re-used 7-8 times on average.
Traditionally, the Unpackaged model has relied on customers bringing their own containers to store i.e. a customer owned/ BYO model.
How we get reusable packaging to customers through home delivery has always been of great interest to us. When I was first dreaming up Unpackaged (in 2005!) I spent a year working through whether it was going to be a home delivery service, or a bricks and mortar shop. In the end, our set-up route became ‘market stall-to-small shop’ mainly because it was so expensive, and logistically complicated, to set up and test a circular home delivery system – the hardware, cleaning, transport etc.
In 2008, when we were in our first shop in Amwell St, we tried a ‘heath robinson’ test where we purchased 200 Lock’n’Lock tupperware, numbered them and asked ten regular customers to order from an edited product list, once a week for six weeks, so we could map usage around the system, washing & sanitising them by hand in the shop.
What did we learn? That it’s hard to get all your containers back (even from customers who are 100% bought into the idea) and nigh on impossible, as a small player, to reach the efficiencies needed to make the system to stack up operationally, financially or environmentally.
Ever since I’ve been super keen to find a home delivery specific partner to look at how a scaled model could operate; so when Abel & Cole approached us we were delighted, and helped develop what has now become Club Zero.
Club Zero members will be able to order staple pantry items in fully reusable, returnable pots, nicknamed 'VIPs' – Very Important Pots. These 'VIPs' will then be collected the following week, to be reused again, and again, and again.
So far so simple… BUT the really interesting part of our test is the HOW of our circular system!
For our Abel & Cole test, we’ve chosen to go the a different way to other large scale innovation – our VIPs (Very Important Pots) are ‘transit’ pots only – deliberately designed to be ugly (in the nicest possibly way!) so that we get customers in the habit of immediately decanting the products on arrival and putting them in their cardboard boxes ready for return, which fits perfectly with Abel & Cole’s pre-existing weekly delivery schedule.
We’re hoping that the ‘immediate decant’ model means we get customers in the habit of returning VIPs, so that we can get maximum cycles out of each pot before end of life recycling as we believe that this is what will create the most efficient system.
The other approach (e.g. the new Loop model & others) says that reusable containers have to be stylish, durable containers with ‘counter top appeal’ (yes, that is a thing). The understandable desire from brands is to have lovely containers sitting on consumers’ shelves - to maintain brand appeal, loyalty and all the other key marketing drivers currently fulfilled by single-use packaging. But the challenge with stylish ‘durables’ is that people will get used to them, and they’ll become part of the furniture so it remains to be seen how many will get returned. And unless the containers’ return is managed carefully, the durable could have a worse environmental impact that the single-use packaging it is replacing.
All of this is untested waters at the minute, which is why we need innovation from all quarters - all models are viable until we know more. No one really knows how customers will behave; or how many cycles the containers can realistically withstand before becoming damaged (everything from being scuffed & dented so the customers reject them on aesthetics or they reach a natural end of life); or how environmentally impactful the logistics of any reusable system will be.
There may be legitimate concerns by brands that the Abel & Cole model won’t work for them – but, frankly, branding is a design question that can be easily tackled - we can ultimately design in better transit pots (collapsible?), branded (smart?) labelling or branded ‘keep me’ containers for home – the most fundamental question we have to start with is - how to set up an expected behaviour that customers will return their pots weekly? Because then it’s game on for reusables, for without the return, nothing else matters.
And to a ‘reuse’ geek like me – I can’t wait to see the results!
Fancy a refill?
We’ll post a link on how to get involved as soon as it’s launched!
Unpackaged press contact: Tamsin Morris, tamsin@beunpackaged.com, +44 (0)20 3633 1945
Abel & Cole press contact: Francesca Heartfield, press@abelandcole.co.uk, +44 (0)345-262-626