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Essential Mod - Breathalysers |
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For enthusiasts their license is their life, so maybe you should help them to keep it.
With Summer in full flow people want to get out there and enjoy themselves. When you consider your typical customer that enjoyment may well involve the odd alcoholic drink which, as we all know, is something that doesn’t mix well with driving. In fact even having one drink and then driving can be a massive risk. Hopefully most enthusiasts are wise to this, but the major problem for many is figuring out if they’re still over the limit the next day. When you think about it, they may be having their last drink at 1am and then need to get in their car just 6 or so hours later to get to work. Put that in context: would you drink all morning, stop at lunchtime and then drive home in the early evening? Hopefully the answer is ‘no’, but for some reason the fact people sleep thinks that the alcohol in their blood magically disappears by the time they wake up. Did you know that four pints of beer, or three large glasses of wine can take upto 12 hours to clear the bloodstream whether you’re awake or asleep? Food for thought.
With increasing numbers of Police roadside breath checks the chances of getting away with it are lower than ever, and rightly so. Penalties if caught drink driving are severe; a potential of six months behind bars, a 12 month driving ban or a £5000 fine, and that’s if you haven’t been foolish enough to get behind the wheel while over the limit and cause injury or even death to another road user or pedestrian. Then you not only have the extended length of time behind bars to think about it, you could also have that on your conscience for the rest of your life. When you look at the consequences it makes sense to avoid alcohol if you’re planning to get behind the wheel of a car within the next 24 hours at all. However, people get carried away and can wake up the next morning unsure about whether they are over the limit or not, which is where home breathalyser kits come in.
Every drinker processes alcohol differently and the only way to really know is through a breathalyser, after all that is what the Police will use. So by offering your customers breathalyser kits you may be helping them to not only save their license but also to save them from causing an accident. While they’re not a typical product for performance and styling retailers to sell they not only make sense from a moral viewpoint, but they can also be a great counter top ‘impulse buy’ and could help to keep your customers on the road, which is surely a good thing for your business. Breathalysers are available in disposable form or you can get more sophisticated options like AlcoSense. This product is essentially the same as that used by the Police, a mobile phone-sized package that you slide open to reveal a tube that you blow into. The screen prompts the user with a ‘Blow’ sign on the screen and then a sample is taken over a five second period. Contrary to common perception, the breathalyser does not simply take a sample from the contents of your mouth. It measures the concentration of alcohol vapour in your expelled breath. This is actually evaporating from the blood that passes through the lungs when breathing. So you can see how the amount of alcohol evaporating from the lungs is representative of how much is in the bloodstream. The unit then tells you with an orange or red light whether you are over the limit or not and will also show the exact percentage of blood/alcohol, with 0.8% B.A.C (Blood Alcohol Content) being the limit.
AlcoSense also has a self-cleaning sensor that keeps readings accurate after every sample which is obviously essential. But are breathalysers an essential mod/product for you to sell? Aside from the moral aspect, the hard facts would suggest that they are. No specialist knowledge is needed to sell them which is a big plus point and the likely buyers are those who have cars, meaning that your customers are the perfect target buyer. On top of that they take up very little space in your shop and something like AlcoSense has disposable tubes so extra revenue can be made from selling the refills. Heading towards Christmas and they may also make an ideal gift as it’s a time when the Police traditionally crack down even harder on drink drivers. It may not be the sexiest of products to sell, and you may feel that stocking them makes you look like you’re preaching, but the potential benefits to both you and your customers are clearly obvious.
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