Bjorn’s Uses Free Recycling Event to Bring New Traffic to Store

San Antonio-based AV specialty retailer Bjorn’s collected 40,000 pounds of electronics Saturday in its first recycling event, Kris Dybdahl, IT and marketing manager, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The store had to turn about 20 cars away after staff members of Corona Visions, a local recycling company, suffered effects of heat exhaustion in 96-degree temperatures, he said. The customers were redirected to Corona’s warehouse, where customers could still donate their electronics for free as an extension of the event.

Bjorn’s had worked with Corona Visions, the only recycler in town, three years ago, on a TV trade-in event, and at the time the recycler charged $35-$45 per TV. This time, with a few more recyclers in town, Corona proactively contacted Bjorn’s and proposed the free event, an idea Bjorn’s had been “kicking around,” Dybdahl said. A broad range of electronics was accepted, he said, including non-AV products such as microwave ovens and computer monitors and mice. Bjorn’s wasn’t sure how a recycling event would go over since “Texas is an odd place” that often is “the last place to jump on the bandwagon,” he said. “People don’t do that a lot here,” he said of recycling, but as a military town, “people come from other parts of the country where recycling is more on their minds,” he said of San Antonio.

Typically Corona charges a nominal per-pound fee to consumers who bring old electronics to its facility, but it waved fees for the event “for what they could get from it,” Dybdahl said. “When we visited their warehouse, it was ridiculous how much they could recycle,” he said, referring to “thousands of mice” that could be stripped down for lucrative copper and plastic income. Consumers also brought CDs for recycling, he said. Corona Visions produced the e-cycling certifications Bjorn’s wanted to see including an e-Stewards designation and EPA-registered facility certification, he said. Dybdahl cited a 60 Minutes segment from 2008 where a Colorado retailer used a recycler that allowed electronic waste to wind up in third-world countries. “That’s exactly what we didn’t want to have happen,” he said.

Most of the items collected from 400 cars were TVs, computers, printers and monitors, Dybdahl said. Bjorn’s gave away a coupon to customers who attended the event for discounts off future purchases through the end of the month depending on how much they spent. A $500-$1,000 purchase gets a $50 discount and customers who spend $5,000 can save $500, he said. The store also held a drawing for a 46-inch Sony TV, he said. The drawing netted the store customer information for consumers who had heard about the event on local TV, radio and newspaper ads but “had never been in our store,” he said. “I want e-mail addresses,” he said, to add to the store’s mailing list of more than 19,000. The event produced a slight uptick in store traffic that day, but it’s too early to tell how the coupon promotion will pan out, Dybdahl said. “We'll see how it goes.” Based on the turnout for recycling alone, the store plans to hold events twice a year, he said. Next time, it won’t be a hot Texas day, he said, and the company will ask to recycler to double the number of employees working the event to “speed up the line.”