Reinvention

Hundreds of years ago, someone in what is now Germany, I think, came up with a great idea and executed on it. The need to be filled was getting a thing from point A to point B without taking it there yourself. The answer was a postal service. We have come a long way since then but have reached not a simple turn in the road, but a full U-turn.

This clip - available online only in France - talks about the problem of dealing with so many orders on the internet, and how stores are confronted with the challenge of how best to get the purchased products (and services) to the cusotmer. The example cited is the store FNAC, a chain carrying many different products, mostly oriented toward technology.

In order to help customers and encourage them to pick up purchases in the store, the customers receive a number and a code on their phones after purchase. That takes them to the door of a box in the FNAC store wall where using code opens the door and, voila, the purchase is at hand.

Sort of makes me think of how mailboxes in post offices used to work, non? Haven't we sped ahead and made a U-turn?