HMS Beagle Survival Boost Case Study: Choose Cubby

HMS Beagle is a consulting firm that helps its clients navigate the journey to survival (and ultimately thrival or growth.) During these uncertain times, we decided to offer one week’s consulting to a different client every week to give them a “survival boost.” It’s an intensive process of 1 hour briefing, 2 hours of internal collaboration and 1 hour presentation and discussion. Amazing what you can get done when you put your mind to it! If you need a boost, contact us:  jaffe@thehmsbeagle.com

Presenting: Cubby

Cubby (www.choosecubby.com) is a recently launched platform that describes itself as the AirBnB of Luggage Storage. Easy, Secure and Affordable Luggage and Bag Storage using excess space of small and medium businesses. Think the back office of a local pizzeria or the employees only changing rooms of a clothing store.

Cubby was up and running in 11 markets, including the likes of Vegas, DC, Atlanta, Dallas, Boston, Austin and Houston. Could you think of a better use case than Vegas with people between their hotels and the airport, hoping to hit it big one more time? 

There were just about to launch in New York City and then….well you know the rest.

Revenue flatlined. Supply dried up overnight. Cubby was in survival mode.

Our first thought with Cubby was to figure out a way to help first responders and essential services, providing a safe place for them to store their change of clothes. In theory, that made sense, except in a lockdown or shelter in place scenario, where few businesses were open and those that were, were just not in any position to be thinking about storage.

We needed to think beyond the ability to slow the bleeding. 

Survival Planning defined is strategic planning in an age of short-termism, risk-aversion and constant disruption. Check. Check. Check. 

During the coronavirus crisis, our advice to companies is threefold:

1. Survive. Literally. Do anything and everything to stay afloat
2. Plan for the end of this; hit the ground running when we get the green light to leave our caves
3. Pivot. Take advantage of this “gift” to adopt new revenue streams and even business models. At a minimum, this means an additional horse in the race; At a canter, full blown transformation. 

 Some highlights included:

1. Survive – Website refresh; customer obsession outreach and research
2. Plan for the end of this – explore new partnerships e.g. WeWork or TSA; Fully flesh out new use cases and new audiences 
3. Pivot…

 To put this the pivot into practice, we turn to our Survival Planning Canvas that includes two key, differentiated processes:

• Walk the Plank: Be prepared to embrace your heresy and put yourself out of business
• Discover New Worlds: Unencumbered, be prepared to embrace a hard reset and reboot

Furthermore, we layered 3 scenarios on top of this:

• Best case: No more Corona. Business as usual
• Realistic case: Corona is around but manageable; Business as unusual
• Worse case: Corona has forever changed the world; No more business…for you

 As the saying goes, plan for the worst and hope for the best. This means rethinking new scenarios in which hygiene and sanitization is the new security and privacy. 

 To that end, this meant exploring 3 key shifts:

1. Manufacture physical cubbies (or lockers)
2. Utilize “ring” like technology offering users 24x7x365 views of their luggage or valuables; This would live in an app offering additional functionality like smart lock/unlock
3. …which gave rise to a whole model: The middleman or messenger model. Instead of dropping off and then picking up luggage, what about one person dropping something off for another person to pick up later? Lost property. A forgotten item. A package. A gift. The examples are endless. 

 It’s also a scenario in which Cubby could play a vital role in two ways:

1. Support first responders and essential services; zero fee for our superheroes and their loved ones to drop off change of clothes, food etc
2. Come to the aid and rescue of small business: get people to come into stores they might not have before 

 In Cubby we trust: The perfect sampling platform for people untethered - always on the move; never weighed down with “baggage.”

If you are interested in helping Cubby with their journey to survival, they are looking for valuable partnerships and funding to help them with their mission to help travelers can go unbagged anywhere anytime! If interested, please contact Sangeetha Duraisamy on sangeetha@choosecubby.com

If you need a boost, contact us: jaffe@thehmsbeagle.com

From Sangeetha, CEO Cubby Inc.: As a young startup, you are always looking for valuable information/advice/ resources which will help with the growth of the company. And this becomes vital during these unprecedented situations, when you are trying to come out of it stronger and more resilient. You guys came up with brilliant ideas to not just cope with the current volatility but also think big. I found the “survive, play the long game, transformation” very enlightening! The survival canvas helped me think through those tough questions and be creative while I am at it. Thank you guys for doing this.