Unbossers Podcast
This show and everything else we Unbossers do is created to help professionals elevate corporate cultures. Our approach is immensely pragmatic. Our content is influenced and inspired by a collective of seasoned executives and experts with real experiences, successes and failures in:
- building meaningful organizations, making ‘doing good’ the constant
- with strong, responsible teams, delivering on their promises
- that focus on the customer
- Embrace transparency and inclusiveness in the workplace
- help each other and grow together cross team borders
- and promote peace, safety and connection in every interaction
Unbossers Podcast
Revolutionizing Retail with Circular Commerce: A Conversation with Tuomo of Twice Commerce
What would it take to revolutionize the traditional retail industry and make it truly sustainable? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Tuomo, the visionary Finnish entrepreneur behind Twice Commerce, as we explore the intricate world of circular commerce. Discover how Twice Commerce breaks away from the conventional e-commerce mold by offering specialized inventory management and order fulfillment processes tailored for second-hand, rented, and refurbished items. Tuomo explains the critical shift needed to address environmental issues like the wasteful destruction of returned goods and how his platform provides a robust infrastructure for businesses committed to sustainable practices.
We unpack the strategic and economic benefits of adopting circular business models, focusing on how reselling, renting, and refurbishing products can significantly boost profit margins. We navigate through the complexities of building versus buying infrastructure and highlight how existing platforms like Shopify might still play a role. Listen to our engaging discussion on the creation of new specialized jobs in inspection, refurbishment, and repair work, countering the potential job losses often associated with reduced production. Real-world examples from the electronics industry and European policy initiatives underscore the potential for creating a more skilled and valuable workforce while benefiting the environment.
In our final segment, we turn our attention to the trends and examples driving the circular economy, drawing insights from the World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF) and spotlighting successful ventures like Swappie and IKEA’s take-back programs. Tuomo also introduces us to Twice Market, a groundbreaking initiative designed to unlock the dormant value of unused household goods. We explore the future of ownership and leasing, delving into the potential challenges and opportunities this paradigm shift presents. Join us for a thought-provoking episode that challenges conventional wisdom and paints a vivid picture of a sustainable future through circular commerce.
good morning tuomo or tomo it's yeah, tuomo.
Speaker 2:I think both of those were quite correct. Yeah, is that like a? Scandinavian name yeah, it's a, it's a finnish name. I would, I would be like I, I, I think it's um, it's kind of close to maybe thomas and tony and and but yeah, it's a Finnish name.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you are not located in Finland. I am actually.
Speaker 1:I'm located in Helsinki. Oh, in Helsinki, oh, okay, okay, and you are Finnish, I am Finnish, yeah, so you belong to the happiest people on the planet. Did you know that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the last year it was the danish, I think it's been the denmark, and finland has been going one in the first and second.
Speaker 1:but there's this saying, like I think, in finland, that we just settle for less yeah, and and the other thing I I know about finland is that the a nice, uh little detail is that your language has quite some parallels with chinese. Did you know that?
Speaker 2:well, that I didn't know.
Speaker 1:I, I, I, yeah that that that's a new new yeah, apparently, uh, under the surface, there are some uh similar, similar patterns.
Speaker 2:It is a very one of the most difficult languages to learn, right finnish yeah, I think it is one of the hardest, but I'm not sure whether like grammatically.
Speaker 1:Well, grammatically it's hard, but it's also the fact that it's it's not that spoken, so uh well, we're not here to um to discuss, uh, finland, nor the fin Finnish language, but we're here to discuss, twice, commerce, and I'd like to spend some time really get to understand what you guys do, because for me it's quite new, but I do have the feeling that it's very relevant for a number of companies in our Ambossers network, so maybe you should start relevant for a number of companies in our Ambossers network, so maybe you should start there. Twice Commerce what is it?
Speaker 2:Perfect. Yeah, twice Commerce is essentially a commerce OS for circular economy. What that means is that we are a commerce platform similar to the ones like, maybe, shopify or Magento that have been built for the linear commerce. So we help merchants with things like inventory management, catalog management or having digital storefronts or order fulfillment, so kind of. In that way, we're in a same way a commerce platform than anything else. But when we say that we're the commerce platform for circularity, that means that we specialize in a few things In circularity.
Speaker 2:There's this one critical thing that changes that, instead of always selling new stuff, you're selling essentially unique stuff every time. So if you're renting out an equipment, you're selling essentially unique stuff every time. So if you're renting out an equipment, uh, you're you're selling access to that equipment and and every item in your inventory is unique in its usage and in history. If you're selling second-hand goods, it's kind of the same thing. That item has been once owned, uh, it has a unique condition, uh, probably a unique pricing point, and all of these things that uh make circularity good is also what makes it a little bit hard, because then your inventory management and all of these processes become a lot more complex.
Speaker 2:So, as a final example, for example, if I do linear commerce, my sales operation is kind of a buy stuff to a warehouse. Then when someone makes a purchase I have a pick-back-ship operation to sell it out. Now, if I do circularity, it's not anymore a pick-back-ship operation, it's actually receive, inspect, grade, potentially refurbish, then reshelf, then pick-back-ship, and then that iteration should be going quite a lot. So our commerce platform takes this into account, that our inventory management acknowledges that every item is unique and has unique, unique history and this timeline that you can rent out. Uh. And then our order fulfillment takes into account the fact that either items are not just going out of the door but they're actually coming in into the door and everything that happens in between okay, so, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So shopify and magento, I know so. These are indeed systems that you can integrate in your online website to sell your products, but twice, commerce does that as well. But the back end the entire order and and warehouse management and storage management is really fit for a circular economy. I have a question. I recently heard that we have this chain in Belgium called Salando. They do online selling of clothes. Clothes and, as you do, when you buy clothes online, you order the same pair of pants in different sizes and then you keep the one that fits and you send back the ones that don't. And now what I heard was that often the ones you send back, that they are burnt because that's cheaper than doing the entire getting the pants back process, checking the quality, washing them and so on. Do you have any? Is that a familiar phenomenon in your markets?
Speaker 2:Well, I can't say whether that statement is true about Zalando and such, but the sentiment of that certainly can be true, that it is historically taking back product returns and being able to reshelf them. It has probably been unit economically more viable than to just unit economically more viable than to just kind of have more of new stuff At the same time. This is the place where I think regulation in many places is kind of now targeting that, hey, this is not acceptable. This is something also where consumers, I think, are a lot more aware Consumers like you kind of hearing these stories and then maybe making their purchase decisions based on these stories are affecting also the business side.
Speaker 2:Where we come into play is essentially saying that these businesses, in order for them to start doing this ability to take back goods and then reshelving or refurbishing or any of that, is not only dependent on their wish and will to do so, but it's dependent on having the infrastructure to do that. And on the infrastructure level, on a platform level, you could say you have two kinds of platforms. You have the digital platform and then you have the physical platform. The physical platform meaning that you have the kind of actual capabilities of people taking back these goods and inspecting them, or maybe you've even gone so far that you have some AI-supported grading capabilities and all of that In order to kind of physically do this movement. Then the digital layer is where we start to play.
Speaker 2:Also, as a company, is that digital tools exist to remove friction from processes, and here our job, we feel, is to help companies like Zalando or similar to have the digital infrastructure, the digital platform, to handle this kind of inbound logistics and the ability to resale goods in a way that they have that resale value as quickly as possible. And it's a complex ecosystem. It's a combination of many things. But so, yes, to answer your question, we've heard stories like this, but not sure whether this is true with Zalando, that they do that, but uh, uh, historically that has been the thing that it's been. You need, you need economically more viable to just sell more new stuff yeah, maybe from my side not.
Speaker 1:Uh, maybe not 100 ethical to name drop zalando here. Uh, it could be any any any online platform doing this. So, uh, my apologies for that. Um, so to recap again twice commerce platform you can create an online store. Um, you can integrate it in your website. Um, you can sell your products online. You can sell and rent them online. And then, um, the entire inventory management and the order management is designed so that you can also get your good sold goods back and resell or rehire them. Is that like a good summary?
Speaker 2:That's an excellent summary, I would say.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how does this help sustainability? How does this improve the sustainability?
Speaker 2:Sure. So how we see it is that way. Back when we started the company, we were kind of running with this company that is extremely small, it's more of a project than a company where we were renting out our banks locally. And it was kind of a thing there where we figured out that, hey, actually we needed this kind of infrastructure. We didn't have it and we needed to start to build it. Just a second Tomo. So you were renting out. What a power bank.
Speaker 1:It's like what you use to charge your mobile phone.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, yeah, way back then it was way back then it was cool, uh, side side project for us, uh, founders.
Speaker 2:But then nowadays you can find them in any restaurant in the world, I think.
Speaker 2:But the the main point there that I want to make is that we kind of understood that if it was so hard for us for this kind of smaller project to kind of even get the first item out and back, how can we assume that the retailers and and and smaller businesses of the world do this sustainability transformation where, instead of just buying new stuff and selling them to the market and kind of hoping that they never come back, how do we suppose that they do this transformation? And then, if you look into, for example, what was the transformation of e-commerce that was dependent on giant kind of technology like Shopify and Amazon and the other players to make it possible for large scale as S&P is at large scale globally to start selling online. So we figured out that in order to drive sustainable consumption, we need to remove a lot of friction from the consumer side, but also from the business side, and it seemed that the best bet that we could do is to develop a commerce platform designed for this.
Speaker 1:Maybe you should give, to make it really concrete, some examples on how traditional online selling companies like, for example, mila or Nespresso Nespresso how a platform strategy could help them reach their sustainability goals.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I think the words platform strategy, that can mean a lot of things. But I guess if we think about sustainability goals, we probably have to start to split it into pieces and say that likely these retailers or brands, they have some kind of a goal of making sure that they're capable of growing their sales in a way that doesn't come at the cost of the planet. And, if I've understood business at all correctly, most of these companies, when they finance their operation, the source of that financing is kind of the gross margins that they do on each one of those sales. So in order for them to continue on that road, you quite quickly, when you do the math, you come to the conclusion that in order for us to secure enough gross margin over the lifetime of a good, we would need to sell that good more than once during its lifetime, so twice or more. And then after that that's essentially your option start to be well, let's servitize that good, let's rent it out or let's resell it. So once this specific user doesn't need it anymore, let's buy it back, take it back, trade it in, and then let's resell it and, if needed, based on the product category, we might do some republishing there there in between. Or let's put it into spare parts and make two products into one now.
Speaker 2:Now, in order for them to pull that off, uh, you have the classic do we build or do we buy argument. You know, do we build all of this infrastructure ourselves or do we buy from Now? When it comes to the physical layer, maybe it makes sense to build it. If you are the manufacturer yourself, if you're Miele, you likely have quite good networking and the know-how on actually what to do. When you get that specific item back, how can you make it resellable? That knowledge probably exists in your organization and that's something that you want to probably build as a platform. How do we, as a manufacturer or retailer, how do we take back goods and how do we kind of maybe combine parts across products and so on? When we go to the software layer because nowadays pretty much every process demands some level of software to facilitate it and to automate the process that's probably where the platform strategy might pay off.
Speaker 2:So, rather than trying to build your own proprietary software, there are a lot of companies we're one of them, but there are a lot of other companies that are aiming to kind of build bits and pieces of that e-commerce platform that enables you to buy that as a service rather than trying to kind of do everything in-house in a proprietary way, because that's a world where things change quite fast.
Speaker 2:Like OpenAI comes out with GPT-5 and it might mean that quite a lot of things have changed in the world of commerce and it's probably good to have a little bit of a centralization when it comes to the platform. I hope that makes sense. So, platform strategy per se that's a complex discussion, but I would say that for Miele and others, in order for them to launch these more sustainable consumption offerings, they likely need to figure out what they want to build themselves and what do they want to buy from the market. Betting on a platform rather than an individual software that is kind of isolated can build a lot of benefits. If you go to Shopify and you look at Shopify's app market, or Wix and you look at Wix's app market, there's a lot of contributors that enable that platform to become better every day rather than just relying on Shopify as one provider.
Speaker 1:How do you look at the following? So I'm aware that there's this big producer of sportswear here in Belgium and France who are really looking at making their business model circular. They will continue to do so, but minimize it and then take the clothes back and then, in terms of quality, I think they will have three levels depending on the quality of the good that they receive back and they will rent it out. This has a huge impact also on their physical storage locations, um, probably reducing also the workforce, um, because they if you, if you need uh less physical storage location for all your new goods coming in that you're selling, if you need less production factories because you're producing less, you'll also need less people working there. So my question is, or rather a statement I'd like your view on, is is it possible that, while we are saving the planet, um, we're taking away uh a lot of um people's bread and butter?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say so because, like I earlier referred, I think there's even a European Union policy study from 2016 where actually the GDP and the workforce impact to transforming to sustainability is extremely positive. In order for this specific company to do that change, it's not just reducing things. You have to start doing things like inspecting those goods. When you get a good back, it's not automatically re-rentable or resellable, so inspecting is a thing level, so inspecting is a is a thing. Um, then you might need to refurbish, meaning clean or or or kind of, uh, repair parts of it, and all of these are actual jobs, uh, and these are actually jobs where, instead of they, there are such where, when you do that, you actually earn certain level of specialization that increases your value in the job market in many cases.
Speaker 2:So this is, of course, dependent a little bit on the product category, but, for example, electronics, about half a year ago, I was at the World Circular Economy Forum in Brussels and there's this company which I think also coming from Netherlands, if I don't remember wrong and they do refurbishment.
Speaker 2:They resell and refurbish this industrial digital devices that are used in large manufacturing, like components from Siemens and similar, and it takes them, I think, two years to educate an electrical engineer to be able to refurbish that piece and that workforce becomes quite highly educated.
Speaker 2:They effectively become electrical engineers and then still they have that they can do ABB parts or they can do Siemens parts, because all of these manufacturing parts are a little bit different. So, based on everything that I've seen and heard, actually it becomes more of a net positive thing for the workforce. We're putting more bread and butter to the table and then, if we take into account things like traditionally harder to employ segments of the workforce, actually this is entry work that can be used in many places where the promise of the workforce Actually this is entry work that can be used in many places where the promise of the future is that you actually learn skills that make you even more valuable and increases your value in the work market, so that you're not kind of locking yourself into some repeatable job that cannot be kind of expanded. So, based on everything that I've read and understood, it's actually net positive rather than net negative Okay.
Speaker 1:Do you mind that I ask some questions about the forum that you went to in Brussels? Sure, yeah, yeah. So, first and foremost, that's the World Circular Forum.
Speaker 2:Circular Economic.
Speaker 1:Forum, economic Forum. Are there a lot of people attending that forum? Is it an important topic?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is quite large, so I think it's mainly policymakers and economists. So I think it's originally by Sitra, which is a Finnish government entity, but essentially most of the governments are represented there. So, an European Union commissioners were making the main speeches there, but there's essentially most of the governments are represented there. So, uh, an european union, uh, their commissioners uh were making the main speeches there. So it is a large, large, large forum uh with there's some industry, industrial representation, there's some capital representation and then a lot of policy makers uh there to discuss. So I highly recommend anyone who's into circular economy to visit world. I think the next one, I think the previous one, was in in helsinki. Now it was in brussels and then I think it's going to tokyo, or it wasn't in tokyo before that. But uh, uh, check, check out world circular economy forum websites and, and and it is a extremely valuable forum that is held annually.
Speaker 1:And there is also an acceptable representation of the industry.
Speaker 2:Yes, but I think that's something that there could be even more and specifically, like you referred to companies like Miele and such. I think these larger companies, they have some representation, but I think it could be increased because then a lot of the policies that are being developed, for example, in european union are are discussed and and uh kind of formulated in these forums, uh, so that's a great place to also learn and and to influence, I think yeah, yeah, indeed, because the the risk of having only policymakers there is that you get these rules and regulations, which are, um very difficult to implement, uh, in in in the real world.
Speaker 1:Um, what are the like, the, the major topics or trends that are discussed at that forum?
Speaker 2:Sure, there's quite a lot of topics ranging in everything under circularity, so it means things like material handling, or it goes even to material handling, re-manufacturing or carbon capturing. There's a lot of these topics that it covers. It's a big, big forum, but in terms, when it comes to commerce and sustainability, I think things like right to repair and digital product passports are now the biggest, biggest issues. What is that?
Speaker 1:Right to repair. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right to repair.
Speaker 2:So devices should be repairable and all of the policies that support that, so that manufacturers cannot make devices that are such that no one can essentially refurbish them.
Speaker 2:Uh, digital product passwords are then this like in white goods, so washing machines and such, you might have seen, you know, the, the tags that say what's the energy efficiency and all of that. No, that is now that similar concept is expanding to every semi-durable and durable good in in european union, meaning that currently still, your t-shirt might say that it's 100 cotton but it's actually 98 cotton and two percent elastic, because it's. It's kind of been okay that there's a little bit of that, that it's not completely precise, but that 2% elastic can mean that it becomes not usable in terms of remanufacturing because you cannot separate that elastic from the cotton part of things. So digital product password tries to address these things and I think most of the manufacturers are quite aware of these regulations and they are adapting to that, but it's still I think an open question what kind of standard it will be yeah, so that's one of the complexities that you introduce when you retrieve your goods back.
Speaker 1:Um well, it's one thing if they're your own goods. Is it also sometimes the case? Because, if they're if it goods, is it also sometimes the case because if it's goods that you've sold and you get them back, you know that there's the passport of the product, even if it's not labeled on it. But is there also a possibility where goods are sold by one company and another company retrieves them, refurbishes them and resells them or rehires them? Is that also a possibility?
Speaker 2:That is a possibility. So we can take an example of a great Finnish company doing this stuff which is now, I think, in Europe the largest or second largest iPhone refurbisher, so making hundreds of millions in revenue. So it's called Swappie. So Swappie effectively buys back iPhones from the market, repairs them to be good as new and sells them back. And, of course, working with Apple is great, because Apple is a great brand and a high value product.
Speaker 2:But also Apple has been famously sometimes making it a little bit hard for others to repair their goods because they want to make sure that the, the goods that are out there in the market are of top quality. Uh, so that's uh, but. But I think they they themselves have been doing more and more of refurbishment and then all of that, uh, so that's. That's one thing. And I want to mention, when it comes to manufacturing, that if you yourself manufacture that good that you take back like IKEA is doing a lot of take back programs it's not only in order to take back the material or to be reselling it or reusing it, it's also a feedback loop on the performance of their product on the market, as they should. So when they get those goods back, they can kind of see that, hey, where's the wear and tear, how did this perform in the market? And that can inform their product designers to make their goods better and more durable and more usable, uh. To make their goods better and more durable and more usable, uh.
Speaker 2:So it is kind of a feedback loop that that becomes self-enforcing, because then they can make sure that their goods last longer and also serve the customer better so that is that is that is one thing that we hear as a kind of a benefit of getting that data back to you uh, that your product designers get a lot more input that your product designers get a lot more input.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you really get the proof. It's not like you're sending surveys to customers and you're analyzing data which is maybe not 100% accurate. You're really getting your products back and you're seeing it. Where products back, and you're you're seeing it. Uh, where, the where, where, the where, and there is oh that that is. That is an interesting benefit that I haven't uh thought about. Um, what are? What are one, two, three other very inspiring examples that you've seen in the world applying circular commerce?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I want to mention, and hopefully using twice commerce to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to use one of our customers. Decathlon UK specifically uses twice. But Decathlon at large has invested quite a lot into circularity and with them I think they've already for a couple of years they've had extremely clear targets on how much of their revenue they want to come out of circular and sustainable revenue streams, which for them means repair services, reselling and renting and all of these kind of servitized goods. Now decathlon has been launching. It uses twice in in uk in all of their retail stores that's about 40 or 50 of them.
Speaker 2:They also do direct to consumer uh, clothing and rental of of tents and clothing. So renting of clothes and and and and tents and the renting is, for example, for a festival like, if you look at Glastonbury a festival, there's quite a lot of tents that are just left out there. So just for the fact that they're gonna rent these things, they have quite a nice, they have actual impact. But also they have a lot of they're doing a lot of in terms of setting an example that there are these use cases where maybe renting that tent for like 20 pounds makes more sense than buying it, because then you get to take it back and then someone else for anything like tents, um, ski clothes, so all these things that you use once or twice a year.
Speaker 1:That used to be a an investment as a consumer, because you want yeah, you don't want to have cold when you're skiing on the mountain. So you, you want to buy good clothes. Same for skis and and the ski shoes, but you only use them once, maybe twice a year. So it makes sense to rent them For skis. That's already happening, right? So the material itself. I mean, I'm renting my skis, but not for ski for clothes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's nowadays. It's been a lot of. This is usually the part in the discussion where product categories matter a lot. So skis, bikes, it's okay, but then the more you go closer to hygienic products and such, the refurbishment process can become harder. So it is these things In Glasgow. I want to mention a company called ACS Clothing, one of the largest clothing refurbishment centers that I've seen, kind of a full-blown 3PL clothing refurbishment center. Anyone interested in clothing resales and refurbishment at scale should visit ACS Clothing in Glasgow. I'm sure Andrew Ruff would be more than happy to showcase the place it's. It's, uh, it's an inspiring operation that they're running there, which to me is like a proof how to do clothing refurbishment at scale and what does it demand and all of that, all of that, so uh, so is it for you, uh uh, still a question whether we will evolve into a circular economy, or is it more the speed which is to be debated?
Speaker 2:I think it's the speed. So we will go to circular economy and the drivers are strong Because the drivers are not purely value-based drivers, they're hard economic drivers are not purely value-based drivers, they're hard economic drivers. So, just if you kind of to me, the math is such that the cost of material is increasing. We're also tending to move somewhat manufacturing closer to home, at least in some categories, which also increases the cost of labor in many cases. But at the same time, when looking at the trends, it doesn't necessarily look like the consumer purchasing power is going up. So that means that we are seeing squeezing gross margins across different profiles of products, and this squeezing gross margin is what companies use to kind of pay their bills.
Speaker 1:So it means that there's this huge pressure to sell goods more than once, so twice or more more, in order to keep growing in a profitable way, and so then it's a question, then it's a question of speed, yeah, and and so the the business challenge is to uh, do the refurbishing process as cost efficiently as possible, so that you can rent it out or resell it with an additional margin on the product exactly.
Speaker 2:And then, and then, then, then we also start to live in a world where the more durable the good is, the more resale cycles you get out of it, so the more profit you get out of it, so, so, so then, to me, the ones that are kind of players that seem to be in a place where they're in a winning position for the future, if they kind of act upon it, are actually these retailers or manufacturers that are a little bit more vertically integrated so they can reap the benefits of getting the product data. They design their products themselves, so they are kind of in a place where they can, they can, start in all places of that value chain to improve the future unit economics, so to say. And then I think, at the end, there's still this kind of, let's say, it's not last mile, but the commerce infrastructure of shipping and payments and the digital layer that is being worked on. And then, at the same time, we're seeing a lot of companies working on the material remanufacturing layer. So to me it's a question of speed.
Speaker 2:It's really like something the linear ecosystem took maybe, I don't know, from 2000 to maybe 2010, was like we developed a lot of e-commerce related infrastructure in the world. I think it's a similar effort that we're now going to. Gladly we can use parts of that. We can reuse the linear part, but there's a lot that we need to kind of build in terms of how do we take back goods, how do we refurbish them? Because refurbishment is a little bit harder to scale horizontally than maybe shipping, because then refurbishing an iPhone versus a piece of a garment, that those skills and devices needed are a little bit different, even though they might fit in the same size of a box. But as we push this forward and I think the exercise is to figure out how do we do this in like six years rather than eight or rather than 12. But inevitably we're going to be there because it is just a better business case for the companies.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're nearing the end of the conversation. I already want to thank you for this great introduction on circular commerce. There is this debate on the fact that European policymaker or some European policymaker they see a future where we don't have, we don't own, anything anymore. You know, everything is for for lease. And then there's this counter debate like well, I mean, if I don't own anything, it could be taken away from me at any point in time. So do you have something to say about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's a. Do you see a?
Speaker 2:similar future. Well, I'm going to say yes and no, because I think, yeah, it's a little bit. It's like it's a nice sentence to say that, hey, nobody owns anything and all of that, uh. But of course, with that comes challenges, like if everything is based on your net income, whether you have the ability to pay this month's rent for all of the goods you have, uh, then your living standards are based on a continuous net income. But I think it's it's been taken a little bit out of proportion.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, I do believe people will own stuff. The question is that what happens after they don't need it anymore? So it is kind of that. Is it then, like currently, when you buy ownership of something, you also buy the responsibility of recycling it or figuring out how you get rid of it? I think this is the part where this responsibility will stay with the manufacturer in the future. So it's kind of that if you went out and you bought, uh, five white t-shirts, you still have the right to just take them back to the retail store after you don't need it, because it's their responsibility to figure out how do we recycle or how do we remanufacture this, uh. So I do think that people will still own stuff uh, people will not to have.
Speaker 2:We will not have to own as many stuff because the the kind of rental offerings are a lot more valuable there and there are specific product categories where this can have a huge difference in someone's lives.
Speaker 2:I think because you've mentioned meal a couple of times the fact if you're able to like whether you have washing machines, uh and dishwashers at your home uh, can be quite significant for someone, uh, because how home if you're running a family of three children, that can be.
Speaker 2:That's a quite significant time saving that you can have in your life. So if that is more accessible to more wide range of people, that can have real economical benefits at scale in my opinion. And then the fact that people don't have to save as much upfront can be a big thing and I think, the key thing also, for we've had a lot of these like in the past five years. We've had a lot of services where you get access to goods with a cheap monthly price but it's kind of in buy now, pay later interest, and that's to me a little bit more dangerous because it's it's at the same same time that end user is taking the whole debt burden. Even though it doesn't feel like that no in in rentals and that kind of a more pure servitization, it's actually the provider that is kind of taking the responsibility of the financing, uh, which is which is, at least on that level, a little bit more secure for the end user yeah, and they are then more motivated to build high quality goods exactly because it's in their advantage.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, well, really, tumor, thank you for this great introduction on circular commerce. Thank you again. If I would give you now some space to pitch Twice Commerce, anything you'd like to say about it to the listeners, where they can find you, maybe, or where they can meet you, just do whatever you like.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, nick. Yeah, I think the easiest way to go check out our website at twicecommercecom. We're also currently working on a new exciting thing called Twice Market, so twicemarket. You can go and check it out. It's our way of trying to make goods re-enter the market quicker, so we've made reselling as easy as snapping a photo of the item you want to sell. So go check it out and see what you like about it. Then, if you want to be in touch or learn more, we're quite active in LinkedIn, especially, I think, your audience if it's the mealists of that world. We're super active in LinkedIn, especially, I think, your audience if it's the Mieles and of that world. We're super active in LinkedIn and we work with large retailers all the way from small businesses can self-service themselves on our company, but we also have a relationship with one of the largest brands and retailers in the world, so always happy to help anyone launch a circular offering, whether it's in one store or 200 stores. We have pretty much proven success in all of those.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. One final question what's the target of Twice Commerce for 2024 or 2025? What's the one thing you really want to achieve with the platform?
Speaker 2:I think the one thing that we really want to achieve it's. It's been our main focus really now has been, of course, we are kind of expanding all of our capabilities uh with in in the platform, with with customers, but one thing that we really kind of focus on is to understand that the supply of circular economy uh is is at the goods that people have at their homes right now. Uh, it's kind of for for corporate e-commerce it's it's things like product returns, but at scale, uh, the supply of circularity is is the goods that people have in their households. And if we take, for example, u US, an average US household has kind of 40% of their goods are inactive or not used. There's $600 billion worth of goods sitting in inactive value in US households.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the things that we're now working on and developing is focused on increasing the speed and ability for those goods to re-enter the market, whether it's in form of consumer to consumer or whether it's to be discoverable by these brands that they can kind of trade in or buy back these goods because they are either a resellable good or they are valuable spare parts and kind of material that should reenter the market rather than sitting in a warehouse somewhere. So that's something that we're super excited about and we want to see that. Of course, we want to see ourselves succeed on that, but I think working on that technology layer and productization of that is something that I see to be quite valuable for the future of the company.
Speaker 1:Okay, man, I wish you best of luck. You have gained a supporter here in Belgium, excellent. I will do my best to share this conversation with as many people as I can. Enjoy the rest of your summer and let's keep in touch.
Speaker 2:Likewise, thank you for having me.
