Will it Vend?

There is a viral series on You Tube called will it it blend. It is basically a blender manufacturers fun attempt to show how powerful their blenders are by throwing a bunch of weird stuff into the blender to see what happens.

In this Fresh Eyes blog, we are going to see if something will Vend....as in, what can we sell or provide through a vending machine that is not normally sold that way.

A quick glance around your world will show that more and more "stuff" if being delivered in an automated way. And the beauty of the vending concept is that items can be sold at non-traditional outlets.

An example of this is DVD movie vending at the grocery store. In our area, there are now large boxes that vend bulk ice. And of course, there are condom vending machines in the bathrooms of many gas stations.

So what unusual items can we think of to vend?

One item I would love to see vended are all the nuts and bolts at a typical home improvement store like Home Depot or Lowes. If you ever go into one of these places looking for a nut or bolt of a certain size, you know the the current model is clumsy at best. The nuts and bolts are in bins and you have to fend for yourself in finding the right nut or bolt, of the right grade, and made from the right material.

A computer kiosk attached to an automated dispenser would be cool here. Basically you enter what you are looking for on the computer screen, enter how many you want, and the dispenser would dump them in a little bag and attach a barcode you can give to the nice lady at the register to scan.

This would solve so many problems for the stores- faster checkout, better inventory control, happier customers.

Using this Fresh Eyes approach, what could you vend?