Gerrard street is a company which sells headphones, but the buying process is a bit different then you are used to. Instead of buying the headphone, you have to pay a monthly fee. The first step is to order the headphone online and it will be delivered at your home. If your headphone get any damage, for example a cable which is broken, you can send the headphone back and they will replace the item which has been broken down. This way the customer buys the an expensive good headphone for €7,50 per month (instead of €250) and if your headphone does not work, Gerrard street will fix your phone without extra costs. It is more like leasing your headphone, like Spotify or Netflix. If you do not want the headphone anymore, you can send it back to Gerrard street and they will recycle the materials for new headphones.

I thought this concept was very interesting because it will save a lot of spilled materials. The company will fix and recycle your headphone, instead of you throwing the headphone away because it does not work or you want a new one. The fact that this does not cost anything extra will motivate the customers to reuse their headphone. Besides, this leasing method is the way Gerrard street collects investors. Gerrard street just had their second Kickstarter campaign for their wireless headphone.

 

For more information: https://gerrardst.nl/faq/#1460300489107-30f3dbe6-110f

 

gerrard street

This course made me question why social media is important in entrepreneurship. To find more information about this topic I searched for an article which confirms this statement. The article ‘social networks and entrepreneurship’ by Greve and Salaff (2003) gave me a new point of view about the use of social media in entrepreneurship. The article stated that social relations play an important role in establishing a firm. They defined 3 phases (phase 1: motivation, phase 2: planning, phase 3a: establishment phase 3b taking over a firm) in which different kind of social media is necessary. They also investigated the difference between different countries and the use of social media. However, this had no influence on the results. Somehow, I thought this would be a difference.  They also stated that in phase 1 the social network is smaller than in phase 2 and that that phase 1 spend the least amount of time developing social networks. Phase 2 spends the most time developing networks.  They concluded that entrepreneurs who consider starting a firm want a protected environment to discuss their ideas. Therefore, entrepreneurs in Phase limit their discussions to their closest relations. However, the increased number of activities in Phase 2 make the social network increase. At that crucial point, efforts at building and maintaining contacts are highest and they spend a lot of time investing in the social network. In Phase 3, entrepreneurs reduce the size of their social networks to important, helpful members, and spend less time networking. I thought it was quite interesting to see the influence of social media in the different phases of establishing an entrepreneurship. It triggered me to continue searching for more information about using social network in entrepreneurship