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Shredstation: Can it Help Cut ID Theft Risk?

Posted on Nov 5, 2006 by Tom Fragala

I was recently contacted by Andy Benson at Shredstation, an alternative to purchasing and using your own shredder. Basically, they have a kiosk at a store or bank where you can dump your papers to be shredded. They contract with a local shredding company who comes and empties the bins from time to time.

I was intrigued but skeptical. So I sent Andy an email with some questions. Here's his response (I did some editing to make it work for this blog post).

Truston: Interesting service. It's the only one I've ever heard of. Are there any others?
Andy: It's the only service out there right now.

Truston: How many sites do you have now?
Andy: We're in 50 locations, mostly community banks and supermarkets, deploying to 75 office supply stores (a national chain) in Jan 07.

Truston: One issue I have is that the papers people put into it are not shredded right then and there. So the level of trust in the local shredder has to be very high.
Andy: The contents of the depositories are serviced/shredded regularly by local, bonded/licensed document destruction companies. These companies also do local government, small business and Fortune 500 companies, employees are consumers as well so we believe the trust/credibility issue you reference will be overcome.

Truston: Also, with people able to buy shredders that fit over their trash can, I wonder about the size of the market.
Andy: We're banking on the fact that many people feel home shredding is a hassle and don't like feeding 1-3 sheets at a time into a shredder.

Truston: What kind of customer traffic are you seeing?
Andy: In the markets Shredstations are deployed we're getting traffic with little or no advertising, which will start shortly. This is encouraging.

I appreciate Andy taking the time to respond. I'm not sure I agree with the 1-3 sheets at a time thing. I have an old shredder and I can put a lot more than that into it at a time. I do agree it's a hassle though.

I do think it's a service worth watching. The need to shred is so great that there is probably room for a service like this. After all, I know of one local bank that has free shredding days (uh oh, free competition), except they don't offer it very often. And if Shredstation has a big lead on the competition, that may be key to their survival. I can't imagine the margins will be that high for this service, so being the brand leader will be important.

Good luck Shredstation. Readers, post comments if you have any experience with the service.