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https://www.inc.com/brian-contreras/furniture-of-champions-how-paris-olympics-tables-and-chairs-are-finding-a-second-life-online/90985320>
"An eight-foot-tall referee chair. Two conjoined, back-to-back arcade booths. A
bubblegum pink beanbag. On the pages of the Restlos auction house, all this and
more—left over from the Paris Olympics—can be yours. Open to bidders through
Saturday, each piece of the furniture, equipment, and decor comes shrouded in
the tantalizing possibility that at some point over the summer a bonafide
champion brushed up against it, perhaps leaving behind some residual trace of
their talent: a whiff of glory that hovers over each of the 1,199 auction lots
like a fine mist.
“Some people have very strong positive emotions toward the Olympics,” says
Restlos’s Walid Meziane. Those fans constitute a uniquely nostalgia-driven
market. “They will have, for example, the umbrella with the Olympic logo in
their garden, and they will remember.”
Nuremberg, Germany-based Restlos is one of the many private companies involved
in the titanic commercial and logistical operation of finding a new home for
tens of thousands of extant Olympic items: bench presses, barbershop chairs,
massage tables, reception desks, medical equipment, parasols, couches, coolers,
fridges, safes, and, of course, lots and lots of flagpoles.
At the top of that funnel is B-Stock, a Silicon Valley-based
business-to-business auction platform that facilitates the sale of preowned
products, or what it calls “recommerce.” B-Stock has a standing partnership
with RGS Events, the Paris Olympics’ official furniture, fixtures, and
equipment supplier, to find buyers for the material left over once the Olympic
Village and event venues have been disassembled, says B-Stock chief executive
Marcus Shen.
Before the Olympics took place, RGS gave B-Stock a “manifest” of the items they
thought might be able to find a second life after the closing ceremonies
concluded, Shen explains, which B-Stock then listed online for third parties to
buy in bulk. Much of it ended up staying in Europe, although American companies
that aren’t interested in procuring stuff overseas just need to wait four more
years—he expects the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics to produce an even bigger
surplus of furniture and equipment stateside.
“This inventory, one, obviously is only used for a short period of time, so
it’s basically brand new; and then two, it actually has some interesting value
from a memorabilia perspective,” Shen says. “The beauty of all this is that as
opposed to letting this stuff sit in a bin somewhere and go to a landfill …
people have an opportunity now, downstream, to make use of this inventory.”"
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-mexico-city-water-crisis-solutions/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
