Cafe a chair leader for collaboration
Like most Wellingtonians I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to coffee. My three faves are Mojo, Swimsuit and Black Doris. All of whom pull a consistently good drop of java.
One of my go-to business meetup spots is Mojo at the bottom of Taranaki St, which is close to a few of the web companies I work with.
Plonking down into a seat there this week, I noticed the chair actually moved with me; a feeling that was both supportive and slightly weird. Well, weird for the first time, anyway.
Turns out the piece of plastic supporting my bum was made from reconstituted fishing nets and carpet offcuts. I knew this because sitting on my table was a plywood cube telling me the story of the chair.
It was a Noho chair, a spinoff from Formway Furniture with a focus on earth-friendly designs that help clean up the oceans and protect the environment. It’s a totally online play with no storefronts and no showrooms.
The chair was a ‘‘Move’’ – a new design was due to be launched in May this year. Obviously that plan went a bit pear-shaped with lockdown so Noho needed a way to raise awareness of the chair as well as give folks a way to try it.
While they could have employed a range of techniques to do this, they ended up going into a business collaboration with Mojo.
Business collaborations have become an increasingly popular mechanism to extend your commercial footprint in recent years – particularly for web companies. ‘‘Collabs’’ range from the mild to the wild.
At the mild end of the spectrum is when a couple of companies who have clients with overlapping interests (like a tent company and a sleeping bag company) agree to share databases and co-promote their products.
At the wild end it can involve creating whole new products that draw on the intellectual property of both companies. Like when Italian fashion house Gucci collaborated with car brand Fiat to create the Fiat 500 Gucci, featuring one of the most elegant interiors to ever grace a hatchback.
In the case of the Move chair, it’s a distribution collab. One that harnesses the brand and footprint of iconic coffee company Mojo.
From small beginnings in 2003, today Mojo has 22 cafes in Wellington, 13 in Auckland and four in Chicago. But they are still looking for ways to grow their business, and in particular ways that harness sustainability.
So when Noho approached them with the suggested collab, Mojo were keen. Not just because it drives new customers into their premises and gives them some cool seats, but also because the sustainability message is on brand.
The mechanics are simple. Potential chair customers are targeted proactively through social media or reactively via an online chat bot. They get sent a QR code for a free coffee at one of the Mojo locations that have the Move chairs installed.
Then when the customer turns up, they redeem the voucher for a coffee and sit down in the Noho chair. If they like it they scan the QR code on the plywood cube and receive a special offer to buy the chair online.
Nojo reckon they are getting close to 50 scans a week, a pretty good hit rate, particularly if the customer acquisition process
filters out timewasters.
Overseas these sorts of brand collabs – where two brands curate a unique offer to give them competitive advantage – are increasingly common.
A very successful collab in the United States has been UberSpotify. After they’ve ordered their Uber, punters can select a playlist on their Spotify App. That playlist is then playing on the car’s stereo when you get in. Very cool.
Other recent collabs include Ford and Tinder setting up carpool karaoke blind dates in the new Mustang earlier this year; and Nike and Apple working together on fitness trackers and Bluetoothenabled smart sneakers.
Each of these delivers increased market share to the businesses, creates additional marginal revenue and gives new customer knowledge so they can present better offers.
Collabs provide local online businesses with a useful way to lift their revenues at a time when sales are slowing.
The latest data from Marketview shows New Zealanders’ online spending was down 7.3 per cent in July, the second consecutive month of reduced online spend. This makes it the lowest monthly growth in e-commerce since February this year, the last full month before level 4 lockdown.
The data also shows that growth at physical retailers (up 9.9 per cent) was almost four times that of online spend growth (2.8 per cent). That’s virtually unheard of in my 15 years of observing local e-commerce numbers.
While it’s not shocking given the way lockdown supercharged e-commerce during lockdown, it’s still pretty sobering for all the local online retailers. They need a way to increase this and a way to sweeten the deal.
It strikes me that collabs could be a pretty useful way to do that right now, particularly if it comes with a free coffee.
Business collaborations, have become an increasingly popular mechanism and range from the mild to the wild. For example, Ford and Tinder set up carpool karaoke blind dates in the new Mustang.
Mike ‘‘MOD’’ O’Donnell is a professional director, facilitator and adviser. His Twitter handle is @modsta and he reckons Mojo’s Injection Blend in a pour-over is the best coffee.