Does The Product Life Cycle Apply To The Mattress Recycling Industry?
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by: cectayl
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The four "stages" of the Product Life Cycle are historically referred to as: Stage 1 or market development, Stage 2 or market growth, Stage 3 or market maturity and Stage 4 or market decline.
Currently the mattress recycling industry is either brand new or non-existent or in Stage 1 everywhere except California where the mattress recycling industry has edged its way into Stage 2 or market growth of the product life cycle. In California the demand for mattress recycling is large enough that multiple recyclers exist and do in fact differentiate themselves from each other via customer convenience. At least one facility refuses to accept public donations opting for those customers needing to dispose of a mattress to take the mattress to a drop off location. A couple of other companies differentiate themselves to carve out their market niche by varying levels of their fees charged for direct pickup of the mattress from the customer's home.
In Scotland, one could argue that initially mattress recycling fell into instant Stage 4 or market decline while permits to dispose of bulky mattresses were slowly working their way through the tedious process of the bureaucracy thus keeping the mattress recycling effort closed down. Once the mattress disposal permits were issued, the stand alone Scotland facility fell into the product life cycle Stage 1.
At this point in time, reality tells us that the mattress recycling industry will indeed go through the normal product life cycle. Those pioneers who with guts and savvy set up the first local mattress recycling facilities will be the ones who initially develop the demand/market. The wait and see folks will monitor the pioneers' progress and when the market becomes lucrative, the wait and see recyclers will jump into the market with newer more technically advanced equipment and drive the price per unit down. Historically, this entrance of more efficient companies into a given market has spelled the end of the pioneer companies who failed to prepare to update their equipment and ignored the low hanging fruit out there which the wait and see companies jump all over when they enter the market.
What low hanging fruit? Many mattresses that people dispose of are really acceptable and quickly purchased in the second hand market. Mattress recyclers can posture themselves to increase their income with this fact or ignore it and shred up a perfectly salable unit. You can bet the wait and see folks will be using this cash flow stream to cut their other costs.
California has already put the mattress recycling industry on notice that differentiation can indeed be achieved by companies providing different levels of convenience to customers. Customers pick the company they want to use based upon what the customer is willing to pay to dispose of a mattress and while they are paying they ask themselves if it is worth a half a day of their time to load up a mattress and haul it to a designated drop off location.
The Green movement itself has already spelled out how Stage 4 or market decline of the mattress recycling industry will most likely occur. The decline of the mattress recycling industry will come about as the supply of discarded mattresses decreases. The decrease in supply will be via mattress manufacturers actively creating environmentally friendly products that they themselves can someday recycle in-house. So current mattress recyclers know this and if one-hundred percent of every mattress product sold today could possibly be recycled in the future by the mattress manufacturers - the supply of non-environmentally friendly mattresses in homes now - would give this industry a fairly healthy twenty year run. People wear mattresses out somewhere between ten and twenty years and who knows how long they truly rathole their mattresses before they actually dispose of them?
Unfortunately, product life cycles remain an art requiring observation, keen interpretation, and the willingness of management to make strategic marketing moves to keep their mattress recycling facility going full bore for as long as practically profitable. The message here is that the mattress recycling industry will go through a somewhat normal product life cycle. Pioneers, who are now taking all the risks to get mattress recycling fully implemented around the world, need to plan for the future product life cycle impacts so that the pioneers enjoy the fruits of their labor to the fullest extent. Having already seen how California is differentiating one mattress recycler from another - pioneers can be ready and be first to grab up as many means of differentiating their services to the customer as possible. Being first during stage one, being fastest with best service in Stage 2, being most efficient - and best priced during Stage 3 and capitalizing on earlier investments and finding means to extend their market in Stage 4 – these product life cycle strategies are all doable if properly and timely anticipated early in the mattress recycling pioneer's strategic planning.
About the Author
Cecil Taylor is the Inventor of the Spring Compactor Invention. For further information on Mattress Recycling and the Spring Compactor Invention, please visit www.MattressRecycling.biz .
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