You've finally done it, you left your laptop at the coffee shop, your cell phone at the supermarket or your PDA on the counter at the office supply store. Maybe you forgot to pick up your iPod from the ATM, where you put it down to answer your cell phone during a banking transaction. Several new companies have launched with the express purpose of helping us all find stuff we inevitably lose every day. Each are using the power of the web, plus toll free phone numbers and a database of unique ID numbers assigned to each item and registered to owners - on special "
asset tags," "
security labels" or "property ID tags".
1,200 cell phones, 1,500 sets of keys and over 300 PDAs and laptops are turned into the Las Vegas International lost and found department annually. - McCarran Int'l Airport Security, July 2003
140,000 items are found annually on Southwest Airlines flights, 50,000 items at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and 20 a day at some Avis Rent-A-Car locations. Despite best efforts, fewer than 1% are returned. - The Wall Street Journal, November 2003
Several companies have launched to help return lost property represented by web sites StuffBak.com, TrackitBack.com, and Boomerangit.com, each company offering to help you recover lost valuables.
An Irish startup has launched based on that same concept of marking expensive portable electronics, laptops, PDA's, cell phones, MP3 players and other valuables with their asset tags (labels with unique ID numbers). That firm also has a website and toll free phone lines where items can be reported found. The Irish company is named YouGetitBack.com and has a cute, black and white spotted puppy dog as a mascot. The concept of the dog "fetching" lost items and returning them to you is easy to understand. The company tag line is "The Lost And Found Company" for obvious reasons.
What is not so obvious to most is the idea that many people are honest enough that they would actually turn in a lost valuable. Most of us assume that if we leave a laptop or an iPod on the bus or subway, that we'd never see them again. But the companies cite several experiments done in the US by 8 local television news stations and one by a USA Today columnist, Edward Baig, to prove that if those valuables are labeled with special "asset tags", that people will, more times than not, call the toll free telephone numbers printed on the tags and return the expensive items.
The television stations had a 75% success rate in getting their "lost" items reported and turned in, while columnist Baig got back 4 of 6 purposely "lost" items (two thirds) in his experiment. Baig mentioned in his column that it was the least expensive things that were never reported or returned - a CD case full of music and a calculator.
If this trend takes hold and becomes popular in the consumer market, it will mirror a concept long used by corporate, government and military organizations. Those large companies, educational institutions, governments and the department of defense have long put asset tags on property over a specified dollar value.
You can see "fixed asset tags" on items ranging from street light poles to heavy machinery. Those items have long been tagged and labeled with unique ID numbers and bar codes printed onto them to facilitate electronic scanning.
More recently, corporate and government entities have begun placing asset tags on more high value movable items like laptops, PDA's, scanners and cell phones carried by employees in their work. This facilitates the identification and return of those "movable assets" when they are lost on the job by careless or distracted workers.
The launch of companies like StuffBak, TrackitBack, Boomerangit show that valuable electronic, digital items are being lost far more often by consumers and they are seeking ways to get their goodies back when they misplace them. Asset tags for the masses may become popular enough to support consumer oriented companies to label consumer items.
StuffBak has partnered with retailers like CompUSA and Sears, while BoomerangIt works product tie-ins with Pioneer, Toshiba, Palm and Seiko Instruments, along with nearly a dozen bicycle manufacturers - (due to their roots as a bicycle recovery company). BoomerangIt is also working with the National Crime Prevention Council (Think McGruff the crime fighting dog and "Take a bite out of crime"). They also work with local police departments in return of stolen goods with the tags. TrackitBack has partnered with Staples and BestBuy stores - so all are agressively marketing their offerings in the consumer marketplace.
Each have business incentives for larger sales of ID tags exceeding 50 or more, with invitations to companies to contact them for volume pricing.
The movement of asset tags into the consumer marketplace is an unexpected development that may be logically extended into property insurance discounts and other unexpected areas. Asset tags are turning up on consumer goods through national retailers and product bundling with cooperating "lost and found" companies to bring your laptop, PDA or iPod back home when it is lost.
