A shop for trading used sporting goods among private consumers.

Key Innovation
To create a dedicated infrastructure of tools ans services to allow users to trade second hand items sporting goods.

Problematic background and context
Minimo impatto is a shop providing a service of buying/selling used sporting devices and clothes. It is located in the north periferic area of Milan. The context is quite degraded, and public transportation is not so well connected with the rest of the city; only two lines of tram reach the surroundings. The chosen of the location has mostly been determined by economical reasons than by market reason. The idea was born while Alessandro was going biking in Australia few years ago. Before this travel, he worked for a multinational firm as a manager , but he hadn’t the time for thinking, for travelling, for biking. He realised this lack of time and meanwhile discover an other way of use and re-use things and so he decided again (he’s used to change life every ten years, more or less) to change first his own life by making something that would have give a sense to his time. His chosen of life is something like a mission, born to implement the quality of life and the quality of time. He loves bicycles and go biking and thinking, watching, listening while he’s on bike, and so he needs time to do it. He also like the idea of recycling. It takes money to be able to go around and so the possibility to re-use something yet well working allows to spend less and to make more travels, and also to diminish wastes and so to improve natural places’ life (where to go biking). Because of he is only one between many and many people liking the same way of life, he’s trying to manage a service that could allow to give more importance to the values of time and of experiences.

Solution description
The service is a easier way of sale of used sport items between private users. The idea is to make in Italy something close to the anglosaxon used market, in the specialised sector of spot items. The system works in this way: – the seller brings what he wants to sell. – he has to be registered, with a document, and this is to prevent from the possibility of selling stolen objects. – the sellers and the provider decide together the selling price and the percentage due to the service’s provider – they sign the contract, which will last for a year (renewable), even if is possible to modifying the price and also to change idea during the year – once the item’s been sold, the seller receive his money without the percentege decided before The innovation is the new concept of used market, for the possibilities either of free using the shop as a vetrina without the risk of done-by-yourself or the specialization of the market’s sector, that allows a specialised service of repairing, suggesting info… The value is recycling to improve the quality of life.

Timeframe
opened in september 2003.

Development phase
It works for 1 year and 2 months, so it is still in a start-up phase. Before the shop’s opening, the idea needs six months of studying laws and burocracy for this new kind of service, because it is the only one in Italy, either for the sport specialisation or for the way of selling. In the first six months of life the shop has started to work very slowly. It mostly sells bikes, but considering this first period, the vendite are seasonable: in summer bikes and rollerblades, in winter skis and snowboarding items.

Revenue/costs model
There are no fees for the subscription. The buyer pay for the item he buys; the amount is divided between the owner of the sold good and the provider of the service. The percentage due to the shop usually vary between 30 and 50 %, and it depends from how much work is required to audit the item.

Social evaluation
80% of the buyers are low income strangers, so that kind of service can guarantee a social life quality improvement for them, thanks to the possibility to have what they need for leisure time at a low price and to sell the items when they do not need them anymore. For what concern people used to the recycling culture, that kind of service would allow to create organised groups of people sharing the same ideas and to spread a deeper consciousness about the importance of contemplative time and life’s quality.

Environmental evaluation
The major improvement towards environment is the more lasting of products’ life that allows to use less natural resources and so a longer life for the planet. Another topic idea is the effort to change the mobility system by improving bicycle’s transportation, in order to stop the increasing of pollution.

Economical evaluation
The service try to teach another way of evaluating money, by promoting the possibility to spend less in order to be able to experience more. The problem is the increasing importance of money, image, tecnology, and the consequent diminishing of time, due to the necessity to gain more to buy what that kind of model propose. But if someone decides to spend his time and money experiencing nature, sports and travels, he needs to spend as less as possible, in order to be able to travel and have more time. The value is the economy of time and experience against the economy of buying (to be or to have?).

Authors
Marta Gianighian, Nelson Issa, Davide Nava / Politecnico di Milano / Italy