A French company that sells lost parcels has opened a temporary store in the Emporia shopping center in Malmö. Despite the poorest week of the year and weak online ratings for the company, there were quite a few customers queuing for the chance to find bargains in the package piles.
– I received quite a lot of socks and t-shirts as a Christmas present, so I thought I should find something special, says Dragan Bosevski, who traveled from Lund.
The company buys up ordered packages that, for various reasons, never reached the customer. The packages are then sold by weight online or in pop-up stores around Europe. It is not possible to see from the outside what the packages contain.
Destroyed earlier
– Previously, the packages were destroyed. The logistics platforms collected them, the online stores compensated the customers financially and the packages ended up in collection points where they were destroyed or burned when they took up too much space, says Alexis Faure, CEO of the company King Colis.
But what happens if you find illegal things in the packages?
– Customers scan a QR code on an agreement at the time of purchase that they must destroy, for example, pirated copies.
Feels a bit strange
Maritha Lindblom and her husband pass the shop by chance but decide to try their luck in the piles of parcels. Although she thinks it feels a little strange to open a package that was actually intended for someone else.
– In their own way, it does, but if they haven’t received or picked it up, maybe it’s better that someone else gets pleasure from it, she reasons.
The store has toured Europe before reaching Malmö and Sweden on Tuesday. The customer ratings on various online communities are low, but Alexis Faure waves the criticism away:
– It’s a lottery, so it’s clear that people are disappointed. There are those who complain that it is the wrong size when they have received great shoes.
And what was in the package then?
Dragan Bosevski bought several and opened one of them on the spot:
– A smartwatch. It’s probably a cheaper watch.
Did you need a watch?
– No, not directly. I do collect watches, but not this kind of watch.
Maritha Lindblom also bought several packages. One of them contained inflatable flotation aids.
– I’m a bathtub, so I may need it as security, she laughs.