If you lost $250 or your shiny new iPhone on a train in New York, what chance do you think you’d have of getting it back? Air-bound swine and Hell-popsicles come to mind. In Tokyo, I’d be shocked if you didn’t get it back.
That’s because Japan has an old culture of turning found items in to a government official. The law dates back as far as the early 8th century, and has been updated several times since, the most recent in 1958.
My information is very old–I have a call into the Tokyo Metropolitan Lost and Found Center, but translations are a bit tough–but more than 2 million items pass through the Tokyo Metropolitan Lost and Found warehouse, with more than 7500 items being turned in every day. Somewhere in excess of $35M in cash is turned in each year. Yes, that’s million with an “M.”
Items can range from bus passess, to umbrellas, to cellphones (their most popular item). Each item is meticulously catalogued and archived in the system. After six months, unclaimed items can go back to the finder or sold. Tokyo makes something between $4M-$5M each year from the sale of unclaimed items.
Don’t quote me on these exact numbers. My Japanese is pretty rusty (read: non-existent) and the clerk or officer helping me (can’t tell which) seemed a bit shaky on the numbers himself.
Part of the reason for this imprecision is that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department seems surprisingly low-tech. I mean no disrespect here. Perhaps this is simply the low-tech site they show to gaijin like me: http://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.jp/foreign/submenu.htm.
It seems to me that Tokyo Metropolitan is prime for a player to come in and create a national database and website to better catalog, track, and manage this vast inventory. The upside for such a venture? A tidy little Classifieds business for unclaimed items.
Future Directions
This model could easily be packaged and sold to metropolitan transit and police authorities anywhere. Take it a step further and integrate it with pawnbrokers to help police catch thieves at the point of sale. In Georgia, pawnbrokers are required to catalog items pawned/sold to them and report this in to the police. You know how this is done? Via spreadsheets and printouts. Now imagine a system where this is all online. A thief comes in to sell his stolen goods, as the pawnbroker enters the item into the system–via serial number presumably–it triggers an alert that is sent to a nearby squad car. As the thief steps out of the shop? Busted!
Now extend that same wonderful database into your SYI flow. I think that’s a pretty compelling feature that no other online marketplace currently offers.