Unsolicited Product Management: Gear Up Give Back™
Welcome to The Unsolicited Product Management newsletter. Here we will apply concepts of product management to everyday products to see if we can enhance the offering to deliver more value to the customer and the company’s mission.
This week’s product: The Outside Gear Up Give Back™ program.
The Gear Up Give Back program (GUGB) is a way for outdoor gear enthusiasts to give a new and impactful purpose to their used gear. Users can easily create a prepaid shipping label directly from the site and package their goods to send it off to an outdoor consignment shop in Oregon. Here the gear will be serviced and sold where all profits are donated to a nonprofit organization.
The problem this product aims to solve: Outdoor adventurers are enthusiastic about constantly having the latest gear, but also accumulate retired, used gear that is in good enough condition for someone else to enjoy. However, getting the used gear to the right people is a tedious and time consuming process.
How does this product address the problem:
- The procedure is easy to understand – customers can navigate to the cause’s homepage, print a shipping label, send out their stuff and the rest of the hassle is handled by someone else.
- This process saves users a lot of time – they don’t need to research, negotiate, or physically exchange items when parting with their old goods.
- The user gets a sense of intrinsic fulfillment – the user knows that they are helping someone else enjoy their gear and the outdoors just as they had. They are also reducing the amount of old gear that just ends up in landfills.
Here are some snapshots of the current user experience:




The enhancement proposed ranked by priority:
1. The donation program is not easy to reach. One has to navigate to the More section in the store just to find the program. This means that a user may not know the program exists unless they stumble upon it within the site. Additionally, if the goal of the program is to find as many generous outdoor thrill seekers as possible, a call to action should be placed both on the product page and the order confirmation page. Users are already thinking about the gear they are currently replacing at the point of purchase and we be more inclined to donate the old. Plus they will be receiving a box from the new gear they buy which can be used to send the old gear!

2. Capture User Information. Users fill out a form when requesting a prepaid shipping label. Why not use this moment to allow users to enter in additional information (if they want). What gear are they donating? (Can we curate gear recommendations based on the donations they send out?). Why are they donating? (can we learn more about what the customers think the missions of this program is?). This will increase the life time value (LTV) of each donor and help improve the program by gathering feedback.

3. Make the rewarding feeling of donating more fun. If this product can maximize the enjoyment of doing good for users, more users will donate more often and hopefully tell their social circles about the cause. To achieve this enhancement the program will need to implement a tracker tied to the user account that can already be created on the site. Here we can count the amount of boxes a user has sent in for donation and the total value of the good donated. These data points will allow the site to make their offering include a competitive aspect. Users will be motivated to climb the leaderboards as they donate more and more items. They can also be promted to share their quantifiable achievements on their preferred social networking sites.

Have an idea for what product to write about next? Want to analyze a product using a specific product management method? Let us know in the comments below!
This content is meant to be educational information only and should not be considered professional advise. All rights reserved.