When Mark Bowles, chief marketing officer for San Diego-based ecoATM, is asked how his award-winning kiosk concept came to be, he echoes a fundamental principle of the self-service industry.
"Don't start with an idea of, 'What can I do with a kiosk?' Start with a problem, and if it leads to a kiosk — great," he said. "If it leads somewhere else, that's probably the better answer. But approach it from a pure market-evaluation standpoint, not a kiosk standpoint."
For Bowles and his business partners, the problem was e-waste, and one solution is the ecoATM, a self-service kiosk that lets consumers trade in old mobile phones and receive store credit with participating retailers as well as other special offers and promotions. Each of company's founders had worked in the mobile phone industry for a number of years and had experience with spearheading start-up businesses, Bowles says. The team came up with the ecoATM concept after finding out that only 3 percent of global consumers had ever recycled a mobile phone.
"That was shocking to us, because a billion-plus phones are shipping per year," he said. "So that was the genesis. We said, 'How do we solve this problem.'"
To use an ecoATM, a customer places a mobile phone in the kiosk's self-contained "inspection bin," where it is then visually examined by cameras to confirm the model and assess any damage. The kiosk then prompts the user to connect the phone to the appropriate cord (based on the model type) and inspects it for electrical operability. Based on the phone's condition, operability and predetermined price bids from the approximately 50 secondary market resellers ecoATM works with, the kiosk then presents the customer with a trade-in value. If the user accepts the value, she then has the option to have the kiosk erase her personal data from the phone. Finally, the machine stores the phone and dispenses a card with store credit in the agreed-upon amount, which the customer can use at the hosting retail location, as well as any applicable coupons or promotional offers.
Thus far, ecoATM just has one kiosk on the streets. It was first deployed at the Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha, Neb., and has since moved to a Verizon store. Bowles says the machine soon will make its way to a big box retail location.
EcoATM works with a small San Diego-based manufacturing shop right now, but Bowles says the company eventually will source a larger manufacturer to meet its long-term volume needs as the company grows.
"We are in the process of building the next ten and then the next 150 after that, and so we have a lot of customers pulling on us to move as fast as possible," he said.
"The kiosk business requires a fair bit of capital – at least the one we're doing," he said. "We're in the process of closing some substantial investments. So the $10,000 helps pay some bills between now and getting the major investments."
And, Bowles says, the company also has stayed in touch with the self-service leader since KioskCom to discuss future opportunities.
"In fact, we met with Coinstar in Chicago the day before we actually won the prize and spent some time there, and we have been in talks with them ever since," he said. "It would be hard to define exactly where it's going to go, but it could include everything from some sort of partnership to some kind of potential investment, I suppose."
