Berry Logistics
Skills Applied: Customer Discovery, Market Research, Product Design, Pitching
Length: April 2013 - June 2014
The Problem: Mishandling caused over $1.3B in damages in 2013 just for U.S Home Appliances. Current practices in the Logistics and Supply Chain industries make for diffused accountability and a lack of transparency.
The Solution: We needed to create a way for consumers and logistics providers to hold one another accountable. Introducing the Berry Tag, a low-cost impact sensor that simply and visually communicates a package's shipping and handling information.
Berry Tags are applied on the outside of a product's packaging so logistics personnel can easily identify whether or not a package has been mishandled. As shown to the left, the red tag would indicate mishandling.
Requirements Gathering: I spent a summer interning at an auto-parts logistics firm to observe warehouse practices. I also interviewed over 100 potential users on the consumer side as part of our customer discovery process.
Concept Design: We wanted to create a product that would allow consumers to immediately identify the state of their package upon delivery. Similarly, we wanted this immediacy to also translate during hand offs within the supply chain such that individual logistic providers could hold one another accountable. As such, we designed the Berry Tag around a strong visual indicator in the form of a high-contrast color change (white to red).
During our initial trial period with a Taiwanese E-commerce platform, we discovered that transportation of Berry Tags themselves were vulnerable to the very problem we were trying to solve. Our early adopter sent us a photo showing that our package of already red Berry Tags, indicating that the package containing tags themselves had been mishandled in the transit process. To address this, we added an additional layer within the Berry Tag that would safeguard from activation unless pressure was applied directly on top of the tag to prime it. In doing so, we managed to preserve the same motion of action for when a Berry Tag is applied to the outside of a product's packaging, while preventing any Berry Tags from going off during their own transportation process.
What I Learned:
1. Respect legacy behavior. One of the key reasons we were ultimately unsuccessful is because we did not adequately account for how existing practices in the logistics industry would work with the Berry Tag. We were too focused on solving the problem of mishandling and failed to address how implementing the Berry Tag might affect other functional practices already in place.
2. Have one clear business model. As a first-time founder, having multiple business models may sound like a plus. Flexibility sounds like an upside, but to serious investors - this flexibility is simply perceived as a lack of research.
Awards:
2013 Taipei International Invention & Technomart - Gold Medalist
2013 MIT-CHIEF Business Plan Competition - 1st Place
2014 MCIP - Advanced Product and Materials - 1st Place
2014 Red Dot - Product Design Award
Berry Logistics
Skills Applied: Customer Discovery, Market Research, Product Design, Pitching
Length: April 2013 - June 2014
The Problem: Mishandling caused over $1.3B in damages in 2013 just for U.S Home Appliances. Current practices in the Logistics and Supply Chain industries make for diffused accountability and a lack of transparency.
The Solution: We needed to create a way for consumers and logistics providers to hold one another accountable. Introducing the Berry Tag, a low-cost impact sensor that simply and visually communicates a package's shipping and handling information.
Berry Tags are applied on the outside of a product's packaging so logistics personnel can easily identify whether or not a package has been mishandled. As shown to the left, the red tag would indicate mishandling.
Requirements Gathering: I spent a summer interning at an auto-parts logistics firm to observe warehouse practices. I also interviewed over 100 potential users on the consumer side as part of our customer discovery process.
Concept Design: We wanted to create a product that would allow consumers to immediately identify the state of their package upon delivery. Similarly, we wanted this immediacy to also translate during hand offs within the supply chain such that individual logistic providers could hold one another accountable. As such, we designed the Berry Tag around a strong visual indicator in the form of a high-contrast color change (white to red).
During our initial trial period with a Taiwanese E-commerce platform, we discovered that transportation of Berry Tags themselves were vulnerable to the very problem we were trying to solve. Our early adopter sent us a photo showing that our package of already red Berry Tags, indicating that the package containing tags themselves had been mishandled in the transit process. To address this, we added an additional layer within the Berry Tag that would safeguard from activation unless pressure was applied directly on top of the tag to prime it. In doing so, we managed to preserve the same motion of action for when a Berry Tag is applied to the outside of a product's packaging, while preventing any Berry Tags from going off during their own transportation process.
What I Learned:
1. Respect legacy behavior. One of the key reasons we were ultimately unsuccessful is because we did not adequately account for how existing practices in the logistics industry would work with the Berry Tag. We were too focused on solving the problem of mishandling and failed to address how implementing the Berry Tag might affect other functional practices already in place.
2. Have one clear business model. As a first-time founder, having multiple business models may sound like a plus. Flexibility sounds like an upside, but to serious investors - this flexibility is simply perceived as a lack of research.
Awards:
2013 Taipei International Invention & Technomart - Gold Medalist
2013 MIT-CHIEF Business Plan Competition - 1st Place
2014 MCIP - Advanced Product and Materials - 1st Place
2014 Red Dot - Product Design Award