Paintedfigs.com - Why unpainted minis BURN US!

I've got a great idea. Let's sell people cars - but what we'll give them will be boxes full of screws, gears, and
pistons. Sure, we'll waste the clients time and make ownership a real hassle, but we get to save on the trouble of
delivering a finished product ourselves.

Don't worry, our competitors won't either. The customers will just have to deal. Hey, we could even pitch the
finishing process as a good experience - and for at least a few out there it'll be true.

Now there are certainly people out there we're going to lose because they'd rather buy a finished,
jump-in-and-drive, quality assured, car - but there can't be enough to justify taking our product to the next level.

The above is exaggerated, but marks out a large problem in business today. Companies try to save time and
money by offloading work to consumers - but the opposite proves is true. Companies that do make their goods
easier to use, build more customer loyalty and steal others away from the user-unfriendly. These companies
practice lean consumption.

The Principles of Lean Consumption

The Lean Enterprise Institute have dealt with topic of Lean Consumption (LC) better than I ever will, but I want to
share the principles of LC with you so you can see what we've adopted as a core plank of our approach to
business.

1.        Solve the customers problem completely by insuring that
all the goods and services work, and work together.

2.        Don't wast the customer's time.

3.        Provide exactly what's wanted.

4.        Provide it exactly where it's wanted.

5.        Provide it exactly when it's wanted.

6.        Continually aggregate solutions to reduce
hassle for the customer.

This may all seem bone obvious, but you'd be surprised how many hot business concepts out there are bone
obvious things that glacier-blooded corporations have successfully resisted for years.

To me, Lean Consumption is more than just a best practice, its about the all important mission of giving that form
of respect we call good service, to the people who choose to keep you in business.

For More on Lean Consumption

There is an excellent article on LC in the Harvard Business Review by James Womack and Daniel Jones, that my
little editorial above draws heavily from. You can find it here, you have to pay for it though.

There is also of course the Lean Enterprise Institute. Their website is great (and free), and I was happily
surprised to find them based in my old digs of many years, Brookline, Massachusetts.