How Fundbox digitized the entire Lost & Found process at Stone Techno Festival – from on-site returns to fully automated international shipping.
Every year, Stone Techno Festival welcomes thousands of visitors from all over the world to Essen. Whenever people from more than 50 countries come together, personal belongings are inevitably left behind – ranging from wallets and bags to cameras, festival merchandise and vinyl records.
For festivals, managing Lost & Found is a unique challenge. During the event, items need to be collected, documented and returned quickly. Once the festival ends, however, the real challenge begins. International communication, shipping requests and countless emails create a significant administrative workload.
Together with Stone Techno, we demonstrated that this entire process can be managed in a completely different way.
A Digital Lost & Found Experience On Site
Throughout the festival, Fundbox operated the official Lost & Found service on site. Visitors could hand in found items or collect recovered belongings directly at our stand.
At the same time, every item was digitized within seconds. A single photo was all it took. Our AI automatically analyzed the item, identified relevant characteristics and created a digital record instantly. This resulted in a complete digital inventory of all lost property in real time.
The guest experience became digital as well. Through a link in the Stone Techno Festival app and QR codes placed across the festival grounds, visitors could report lost items at any time – without waiting in line or visiting the Lost & Found stand.
Reducing Uncertainty for Guests
At festivals, visitors often start looking for their belongings before someone has actually handed them in.
Traditionally, this leads to:
- Multiple visits to the Lost & Found office
- Uncertainty about whether the item has been found
- Unnecessary stress throughout the festival
Fundbox fundamentally changed this experience.
Guests could report their missing item within seconds. As soon as a matching item was registered, they received an automatic notification. Instead of wondering whether their belongings had already been found, guests could simply rely on the platform to keep them informed.
Festival Lockers Made Easy
Festival lockers presented another valuable use case. After the event, lockers are frequently cleared, leaving behind numerous personal belongings that are difficult to assign manually.
Using Fundbox, entire locker contents could be digitized within minutes and matched to their rightful owners – without spreadsheets or lengthy communication.
For Stone Techno, this turned one of the most tedious post-event tasks into a matter of minutes.
The Biggest Challenge Starts After the Festival
Many Lost & Found solutions focus primarily on supporting operations during the event. For international festivals, however, the largest workload begins after the final performance.
Most visitors return home the very next morning, often to different cities or even different countries. Picking up lost property in person is simply not an option.
This usually results in:
A time-consuming process for festival teams – and a frustrating experience for guests.
Fully Automated Shipping
This is where Fundbox delivered its greatest value. Once an item had been confirmed, guests could simply choose to have it shipped through the platform. Fundbox handled the entire process:
- Verification of the correct item
- Shipping selection
- Payment of shipping costs
- Automatic shipping label generation
- International shipment preparation
For the festival team, the process became remarkably simple. Print the shipping label, attach it to the parcel and hand over the day's shipments.
No payment collection. No lengthy email conversations. No manual coordination of international deliveries. For a globally attended festival like Stone Techno, this automation made an enormous difference.
Creating a Better Guest Experience Until the Very End
Lost & Found is often the final interaction a guest has with an event. That final experience plays a major role in how visitors remember the festival.
With Fundbox, a traditionally administrative process became a seamless digital service. Guests could track their request, receive automatic updates and recover their belongings from anywhere in the world.
Festival staff benefited from dramatically reduced administrative work. Guests gained peace of mind, transparency and confidence that someone would continue taking care of them even after the festival had ended.
The Result
Stone Techno successfully digitized its entire Lost & Found operation with Fundbox – from collecting items on site to coordinating international shipments after the event.
The platform significantly reduced communication efforts, simplified internal workflows and enabled guests around the world to recover their belongings with minimal effort.
Because a great festival does not end with the final performance.
It ends with the feeling that every detail has been taken care of.
And that is exactly where Fundbox makes the difference.