Between Service&Manufacturing
Enlighten
Fixing products is the first step to fix the world.
Kiyong Shin, the CEO of Enlighten, has opened the talk with this statement. While it may sound like a bold statement for a company that fixes electronic household supplies, the talk demonstrated that this was not an overstatement. On December 21, 2020, Kiyong Shin, the CEO of Enlighten shared the work at Enlighten during a roundtable with Daehyuck Choi (director of the oounivlab), professor Jie-Eun Hwang (Beta City Center, University of Seoul), Haeran Park (Sewoon Cooperation Support Center), Heegon Choi (University of Seoul) and Chaewon Ahn (Civic Data Design Lab, MIT). Due to the elevated alert level of quarantine in Seoul, the talk was moved to an online venuen which was originally planned to take place at the Seoul Upcycling Plaza where Enlighten is based.
The Enlighten office in the Seoul Upcycling Plaza (image: Chaewon Ahn)Enlighten works with a mission to realize the circular economy of reusing and recycling electronic products, through a diverse range of businesses, and outreach activities. Starting from the idea of creating rechargeable batteries, the work quickly expanded towards repairing electronic products especially targeting products that were purchased by customers via the internet that do not have a service infrastructure domestically. While aiming to reduce the e-waste that ends up in landfills and other countries through repairing electronic products, Enlighten approaches the solution from a product-service systems approach. Enlighten focused on resolving the obstacles that keep customers from repairing the products they own: the high price, the reliability, and the accessibility. Tapping into the embodied knowledge of skilled technicians with over decades of experience in electronic product repair, Enlighten combines this knowledge to a modernized and customer-friendly process in which product repair can be taken care of on a massive scale.
The approach that Enlighten takes exemplifies innovation in multiple dimensions of work. On the largest scale, they are carving out a new field of ‘servitization of manufacturing’ that sits between manufacturing and repair service. But on the day to day operation, they are also combining the knowledge that resides at the fingertips of the skilled technicians with modernized processes, such as order tracking services, SNS based customer service, and completely contactless processes that facilitates the product repair of customers regardless of where they live. The innovation follows through the smallest scale of designing new packages that can be used repeatedly to ship and receive the electronic products to repair.
Technicians across generation working toegher (image: Enlighten webpage https://better-renew.co.kr)Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the work that Enlighten engages is the creation of a workspace where the skilled technicians work together with younger technicians who have just graduated from high school. Unlike the rosy picture of the older and younger generation learning from each other in harmony, Shin had to learn the hard way how to navigate the conflict and complex dynamics between the older and younger technicians. The development of the service runs in parallel with the fusion among people from different backgrounds with a shared passion for reducing e-waste in the electronics market. As a result, they estimate that they have saved 500,000 trees by the repair over the past five years. Building on the experiences of the B2C (Business to customer) model of Enlighten, new B2B services are Enlighten X, AS start, AS Seconds, which aim to further combine the system with existing manufacturing businesses, startups, and second-hand retail markets.
Beyond the development of a system for electronic product repair, Enlighten also actively engages in expanding the ‘repair ecosystem’ through programs such as the Repair Cafe, and their website under development, Repair city Seoul. The repair cafe has been an open event where participants could attend ‘product disassembly shows’ to learn how products are configured, and repair workshops. The events aim to promote the notion of repairing defective products rather than replacing them and have shown educational effects, especially on the younger audience and youth. Finally, the Repair city Seoul is an upcoming project which aims to find and introduce craftsmen that repair various types of products ranging from shoes, bags to electronics and cameras. The website will be a participatory map where anyone can submit a repair shop they would like to introduce, which will be paired with a youtube channel that introduces these craftsmen in depth through interviews.
Amid the normalization of the pandemic situation, Enlighten has seen a steady growth of the service, due to people spending more time at home and looking after their living environments. The renewed interest in repairing existing products is a positive step towards critically reflecting our way of living sustainably on this planet.
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation co-hosted with the Beta City Center of the University of Seoul the ‘Smart Rookies of Neo Manufacturing’ talk show series as part of the Sewoon Global Forum 2020. The talk with Enlighten marks the last talk of the series. The talk was streamed live on Youtube and can be found on the Sewoon Global Forum 2020 website: https://forum.betacity.center.
