Are your customers reaching out to you for repairs?
Though many retailers and manufacturers have joined hands to set up efficient Return - Recycle or Return- Refurbish- Resell models for managing the end of life-cycle processes for electronic products, a lot of white space exists in the market for DIY(Do it Yourself) enthusiasts. We all know that the electronics supply chain is quite complex with multiple echelons for demand planning and is very susceptible to short product life cycles and inventory obsolescence. The supply chains have a very high level of information sharing and the participants even include appropriate returned or repaired items in ATP calculations. However I am yet to see a manufacturer come up with a DIY kit product line which enables a customer to easily replace parts themselves and send back the defective parts for recycling to the manufacturer or the component handling center. This would certainly be at loggerheads with the marketing agenda of planned obsolescence and new product introduction. On the other hand, the DIY kit sellers are a good outlet for the component manufacturers to increase the sale of their component inventory. So I do see this trend to continue and some type of natural equilibrium emerge where the manufacturer Recycling channel and the DIY/Direct channels co-exist. What intrigues me is that with WEEE/RoHS and similar legislations looming large, who will be responsible for ensuring compliance for the waste generated by the DIY projects - the manufacturer, component supplier, DIY kit seller or the Retailer?
