Introduction to Assembly Work
Almost everyone has dealt with frustration of assembly work. That awesome looking Scandinavian furniture that comes in a box with a million parts. For those that are not naturally inclined to follow instructions or turn a screw driver. It is an unnatural and highly frustrating effort to get this put together without causing huge amounts of damage to the furniture or themselves.
But the excitement that turned to frustration started long before they got to this point. Usually it started at the loading dock, trying to figure out how to fit a 300lb 10’ x 5’ box into a little Volkswagen sedan. Then when they got home, those 300lbs of parts had to make it up flights of stairs without getting dinged up. Then they realized they didn’t have the basic assembly tools. Once that adventure is done, they still had to figure out how to haul away the old furniture. This creates a fantastic opportunity.
The Market
While we talked about the a certain Scandinavian furniture company, this market is vastly bigger than just that. Most big box retailers have adopted similar approaches to everything they sell. Some of these companies offer services to help for a large fee with some very low paid workers. But the biggest annoyance of their in-house service is the lengthy delay to get someone out to help. Most folks that make the decision to buy something large and bulky last on impulse. They want it transported and installed in the same day…the big weekend project. Having it scheduled out a week or two is extremely frustrating. This is an opportunity to win with speed.
On the other side of assembly work is factories and other similar repetitive work like assembling thousand of chairs at a venue. This is probably the side you want to focus on as it is far easier for an agent to approach the market and build a substantial business around it. Assembly work is fairly easy to staff as there is a lot of people that love repetitive work like this.
Best Practices
Creativity is key with this market. Here is some tips and tricks we have heard from the field.
With big box, one very inventive individual figured out how to put QR codes on every spot and car in the garage without the company every knowing about it.
Another had recruited the dock workers at a big box retailer to tell folks at the dock to use Hefe if they need help. As we expanded the app to have a multi-level commission model, the incentives for those workers created explosive demand.
Always make sure you recruit enough folks with pickup trucks and basic tools that are available on weekends when demand surges for assembly work.
Short term surge work at a local companies that have large orders the need large amounts of additional staff for short periods of time are ideal for the platform.
Venues and event companies are a great source of large projects that require large numbers of temporary staff to assemble and disassemble chairs, tents, tables, fencing, etc.
We are looking forward to hearing more assembly use case stories from our agents. Please feel free to DM us with a market and pitch that works for your local market that you don’t mind sharing.