Since many of his Garment Care Inc. customers weren't home to pick up or drop off clothes during the day, he wanted to serve them at work. The owners and managers of their downtown offices frowned upon drivers prowling the floors for clothing pickups. So Porter installed drop boxes in the lobbies or parking lots of four Kansas City office buildings. Customers leave their clothes in the boxes. Garment Care then delivers the clean clothes to a closet on each floor.
Consumers seem to like the concept.
Midwest Research Institute polled 800 households on their attitudes toward Smart Box in late 1996. Ninety-two percent said they'd use it at least once a month for groceries. Porter isn't the only one looking for commercially viable solutions to the delivery problem. For Porter's E-mail notification to work, vendors would require access numbers the device could recognize. He also envisions a central tracking system to record pickups and drop-offs to the boxes.