Oxfam shops using QR codes for story of donated objects
Howard Lake | 15 October 2010 | News
RememberMe, part of FutureEverything 2010 in Manchester, has been kitted out with RFID iPhones and Bluetooth devices to ‘replay’ the memories of objects for sale in an Oxfam shop.
According to Springwise.com, “people donating items at an Oxfam store in Manchester were asked to tell a story about the object into a microphone, including when and where they acquired it and any personal stories associated with it.
“The audio clips were linked to an RFID tag and QR code and items tagged with a story were added to the shop’s stock as part of the in-store exhibition. Visitors to the shop used their own smart phone or a bespoke RFID reader to listen to the stories through speakers in the shop, and were invited to purchase the story-tagged objects.”
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In this way Oxfam was able to personalise and bring storytelling to individual items in its charity shop. The era of mass production can, it seems, still yield individual stories about objects, when overlaid with people’s memories of that object – who used it, who bought it, how it was used, what it meant to someone.
This could prove a powerful new tool not just in differentiating charity shops from other for-profit shops but in underlining the importance of recycling and reusing items.
Editor’s note, 20 September 2022
Twelve years later, here is IKEA taking a very similar approach, recognising the value of the history of an individual item for sale in its second-hand furniture shops.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.