Dear Mr. O'Reilly,

As your name was mentioned in yesterday's special report at siliconvalley.com, I thought you might find the issue and solution below of interest.

Although my company is not a dot-com, we have delivered like one for years. Yet significant penetration of our "potential" market has always been a problem. You see, we operate a home pickup and delivery dry-cleaning route; but despite numerous promotional offerings, only a small number of families in each of the neighborhoods we serve have ever been willing to give us a try. Why? Well, the biggest problem concerns how orders are actually "gotten." I mean, most people aren't home to meet our driver, and they seem uncomfortable with having their clothes left unattended outside their door. Furthermore, though we always give customers the option of giving us the code to their garage, no more than a handful of folks have ever taken us up on it; it seems that trust is just too big of an issue. And though we could try to deliver only when folks are home, I've just got to believe that (a) only a small percentage would willingly pay the added cost for the inefficient use of trucks and labor; and (b) scheduling snafus would inevitably occur, and so too would customers' loss of patience. In my opinion, the potential for most dot-com retailers is constrained by exactly the same things!

So, what's needed? Several years ago, in an article found at http://www.wired.com/wired/6.07/negroponte.html, Nicholas Negroponte said: "Among other things, we need to rethink the concept of a mailbox.... [T]he mailbox of tomorrow ought to be a cubic yard, with the potential for refrigeration." And in an interview in the April 2000 issue of "Victoria" magazine (p. 34), Esther Dyson said: "You really shouldn't have to go to the store to get milk or other things you use every day, like toothpaste. If you live a reasonably steady life, these things should come by subscription." "The return of the milkman?" asked the interviewer. "Exactly," said Esther. "But instead of a milk box, you'll have a large lockbox with a security combination. Every delivery person will have his or her ID, so you'll know who put what in when."

Recently I received some evidence about why such a device should work. I asked a few of our customers to pretend that their homes did not have a mailbox, then tell me whether they'd prefer to: (a) ask the mailman to leave their mail by their front door; or (b) go to the post office to pick it up. Interestingly, for security reasons almost everyone said that they'd prefer going to the post office to get it--even though it'd be much less convenient. Similarly, if homes aren't equipped with a new mailbox-like device for storing the type of stuff that dot-coms sell, it only seems logical that most folks will continue to prefer going to stores.

Bottom line: There's a world of consumers who don't necessarily like going to stores, yet who don't want their valuable stuff left outside their door; who probably won't want to stay home just to meet the delivery guy; and who also probably won't trust that some delivery guy won't steal stuff out of their garage. I firmly believe that the key for dot-coms to stay alive is to equip all homes with the type of device being developed by Brivo Systems, Inc. And I cordially invite your thoughts.

Thanks very much for your time.

Sincerely,
David Porter

P.S. Besides the limited potential of our current home delivery business, I thought I should also tell you that the biggest reason I'm so interested in this issue is because my entire industry is dependent upon it for growth. You see, casual dress is decreasing the demand for dry-cleaning, and since everybody knows that we already "take folks to the cleaners" anyway, we figure that it's high time to innovate. A brief outline about how I think that's possible can be found at www.fastlaundry.com.

Dear Mr. Porter:

You wrote to Tim O'Reilly, but your answer is coming from Frank Willison, editor in chief for Technical Publishing, instead. It's not whom you asked for, but sometimes people get the wrong dry-cleaning, too, don't they?

I may not be well-suited to comment on your solution: I didn't even know that garage doors had codes. Mine still has a Master padlock opened by a key (as opposed to a "key"). But if you could see what was in mine, you'd understand that protecting it is not an issue for me. I mostly lock the door to keep out racoons and skunks. (I strongly suspect that our clever urban racoons would learn our garage code in days and would soon have the same access to my garage as I do.)

As a business manager myself, though, I found your experience a puzzle. Many of my employees are telling me that they're "working at home." If I think they're at home, and you think they're at the office, where the hell are they?

I went to www.brivo.com, as you suggested, and I understand the logic of your solution. The cycle of online ordering to physical delivery and acceptance fits the lifestyle you've described. The idea is an extension of current practices in some industries: companies that sell large quantities of meat for home delivery provide a freezer for the meat they deliver. And some of the Web-based urban delivery services have provided receptacles of various sorts for their customers as well. Your generic version of this idea is an improvement on these "proprietary" solutions.

You've hit on the difficult part of Web-based businesses: for the ones that require some connection to the physical world, delivery of the goods is the business's Achilles' Heel. Information-based businesses adapt beautifully to the Web, but physical businesses (the disappearing Web-based furniture companies are a great example) have foundered on the delivery and return end of the cycle. That explains why, for example, O'Reilly has invested in our new Safari: O'Reilly Books Online service. For those people who want immediate delivery of information, rather than a physical book, Safari is a big improvement over online delivery of paper books. (I like the paper myself; when I fall asleep and the book slides off my lap onto the floor, there are no broken parts to replace.)

I like two aspects of this Brivo New World: it would increase the demand for delivery trucks and their drivers, reviving a dying occupation that goes back to urban pushcarts. These delivery trucks would also infuse some daytime human activity to the suburban ghost towns where your customers live. How do these people know what's going on in their homes and neighborhoods all day? For all they know, their houses are being used by drug dealers, spies, or clever urban racoons. Delivery men might notice such unauthorized activity.

Note, though, that Brivo currently sees their market as business customers. I suspect that the margins are higher there, and that businesses are more able to absorb the costs of purchase, installation, and maintenance of this large, powered, secure locker. Conceptually, I think you're on the right track, but it will be a long time before there is a system sufficiently inexpensive and widespread to allow adoption of this business practice by comsumer-oriented industries like yours. I think that the dry-cleaning industry will need some other solution to carry it over.

In the interim, I would support legislation requiring some percentage of the residents of a neighborhood to stay home. People might remember why they have homes in the first place. I would certainly also support a return to the practice of wearing clean clothes to work and out in public. I hope that dry-cleaning experiences a renaissance and the era of Ratso Rizzo Casual Days at work is coming to end. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then dry-cleaning, after all, is practically a sacrament.

Frank Willison

Return to: Frankly Speaking