Umbrella-sharing Startup Loses Nearly All of Its 300,000 Umbrellas In a Matter of Weeks (shanghaiist.com)

Posted by msmash on Monday July 10, 2017 @02:41AM from the saw-it-coming dept.

With bike-sharing companies like Mobike becoming incredibly successful in Chinese cities, a few startups have decided to mimic the concept with shareable umbrellas. The only problem: most of the umbrellas have gone missing, reports local media. From a report: Only a few weeks after starting up operations in 11 cities across China, Sharing E Umbrella announced that it had lost almost all of its 300,000 umbrellas. The Shenzhen-based company was launched with a 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) investment. The concept was similar to those that bike-sharing startups have used to (mostly) great success. Customers use an app on their smartphone to pay a 19 yuan deposit fee for an umbrella, which costs just 50 jiao for every half hour of use.

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Well, collect on the deposits... by bobbied · 2017-07-10 02:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

You don't lose anything if you keep the deposit... Just buy new ones.. Right?
Seems like a great way to sell umbrellas to me... Here borrow this, but if you don't bring it back I'm going to charge you...

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
1. Re:Well, collect on the deposits... by Wycliffe · 2017-07-10 03:53 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  The problem is that umbrellas are too cheap. If they make the deposit any higher people won't use the service out of fear of losing it, but at the same time it's not enough to motivate them to return the item.
  This hasn't stopped Redbox in the USA. Redbox doesn't even charge a deposit but they will continue to charge you for 30 days if you don't return it. After that, it's yours.