When we talk about the average ‘consumer’ in the UK, it’s very tempting to overlook the influence of disabled people and their appetite for consumables which, if we’re honest, is just as voracious as everyone else. This ‘purple pound’ represents the spending power of disabled people – and it’s growing rapidly.
Across the globe there are an estimated 1.3billion people with disabilities that range from the severe to those with a greater degree of independence and mobility. That represents a potential marketplace that’s the same size as China, supposedly the largest consumer base in the world. That purple pound we mentioned earlier is worth an incredible £249billion to the world economy. So, any manufacturer or company that disregards or doesn’t factor in the spending power of the disabled is missing out on a huge potential consumer base.
Understanding the Purple Pound
However, what many producers are lacking in is a real understanding of the needs (and wants) of the purple pound proponent. So, innovative companies that do have that insider edge into the different challenges that disabled people have are now setting up both in the real world and online, and all of them with this huge target audience specifically in mind.
Many of the businesses are set up and run by disabled people, who have come up with practical and clever solutions to daily challenges that they’ve faced, with the expressed notion of improving everyone’s lives through the benefit of their experiences. Organisations like the non-profit collective Think Designable, are looking at removing barriers not just by producing clever products or services, but by thinking differently about how they manage and run their businesses so that disabled people feel fully included in the process, from start to finish, whether they’re employees or consumers. Marianne Waite, the collective’s founder, says that small businesses often have the advantage over larger organisations when it comes to inclusiveness. “They are created as barrier free as possible,” she explains. “Large organisations often need to change old systems to remove the barriers for people with disabilities. Small new entrants to the market are able to be agile from the word go.”
The Internet
The key that has unlocked a lot of doors for disabled people has been the internet. Indeed, many of the businesses started up specifically aimed at the purple pound are apps or online services, such as Blue Badge Style – a clever online service created by MS sufferer Fiona Jarvis. Blue Badge Style sprang from Fiona’s own experiences of the difficulties she encountered when trying to access venues across London. Blue Badge Style lets people know what venues are accessible, enabling disabled people to continue to enjoy an active social life.
Crowdfunding
The onset of crowdfunding has also helped many products that would never have got off the drawing board actually make it to market. The flurry of small business activity, and its corresponding positive response, has finally made larger organisations sit up and take notice. Now, bigger companies are starting to become more pro-active in considering their potential purple pound marketplace. And while getting investors to back SMEs has been hard, it is starting to become easier as they see the potential for real success.
Let’s be honest here, though – this isn’t an altruistic approach by bigger businesses. They’re all about the profit, and whether that profit comes from able-bodied or disabled customers is irrelevant. But what they are doing (sometimes inadvertently) is opening up the marketplace for disabled customers and companies that specialise in innovative products and services for the disabled market. And of course, making a bit of money too along the way.
Growing Market
So how big is that market in the UK? Well, according to C&M Research, pretty high. Demand for equipment for people with disabilities has shot up by over 92% in the last ten years, while the total purple pound UK market ballooned by over 9% last year alone. From intelligent prosthetic limbs to tourism apps, the purple marketplace is becoming a thriving hub of innovation and advancement, driven by an ambition to deliver greater inclusion for both customers and disabled business entrepreneurs.
As the barriers start to come down, those businesses are looking more sustainable, which in turn will encourage greater financial commitment from investors. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and the plethora of vibrant new companies with their sights set firmly on the disabled customer are certainly proving that invention is also the mother of a thriving economic community with a strong ethos of inclusion for all. And that has to be a good thing in a healthy and well balanced economic marketplace.
Taking all this into consideration, perhaps, other businesses could learn a lot from the purple marketplace…
