Clever Design's SwissAir-Boy Storage
by on 03.24.05
You may not have thought about it, but airplanes are built to take a lot of abuse. Sure, they're light and "aluminiumy" enough to fly, but when you think about the daily pounding that 6-8 flights, landings, loadings and unloadings must do to them, it's a wonder they hold together at all. In the end, though, their parts do wear out, and must be replaced for safety's sake. Clever's design team has taken this as an opportunity for some... well, clever products...
The SwissAir-boy line of rolling storage is nearly exactly the same as you might find peanuts and sodas being served from on one of their flights. Clever's designers have partnered with Swissair to receive the food trolleys which are no longer fit for service due to wear. After some sprucing up, and repairs of wheels and hinges, the carts are customized inside for a more useful layout, and sold in boutique stores around Europe. Each cart is truly unique, as Clever only gets a few in each year. Prices (converted from Swiss Francs) are around $1000 US for the big guys, and $350 for the smaller ones.
:: SwissAir-Boy Storage Containers [by DM]
This is disgustingly anti-treehugger.
$1000 for a storage container? That's a year's wage in countries like Kenya! Who could possibly afford such a proposterous price tag for a STORAGE SHELF? Do you think it's the kind of person that 'does more with less?" What kind of economy even allows a single person to control so many resources? It's not a green one.
The reason they cost so much is the way they're built to begin with then reconditioned after they're retired from flight service. As for doing more with less I think this falls in with treehuggers article a while back "In praise of brick shithouses"; would you rather see someone spend $1000 dollars on a storage shelf that will easily last more than the next 100 years in residential use or see it dumped because it isn't flight certified anymore plus the purchase of any number of less sturdily constructed shelves that use additonal resources? Is it worth $1000? I think that's just a matter of what kind of timeline you're looking at.
What reconditioning could possibly make them worth $1000, if they were due to be dumped? And you expect 100 years of residential use? Amazing they didn't last a little longer in flight then.
MFS has it spot on.
What sort of timeline could possibly justify such a ripoff?