Neil Koenig, ideaXme Senior TV Series Producer and interviewer talks with Kilian Kaminski, Co-founder of refurbed.
Neil comments: Does your home have a drawer with an old smartphone in it? If so, you’re not the only one. According to one study there are some 200 million unused phones in homes in Germany alone: that’s more than two per person. “This is a tragedy” says Kilian Kaminski, because there are “resources in these devices, which are really valuable – gold, silver, copper, and they are just lying around without any usage”. Kilian, along with Peter Windischhofer and Jürgen Riedl, is now trying to do something about the situation. Several years ago the trio founded “refurbed”, a company based in Vienna that renews old electronic devices and makes them usable again.
Refurbed Electronics the Cool and Smart Choice
I caught up with Kilian Kaminski at the 2024 St Gallen Symposium. In this interview with me for ideaXme, he talks about how his enterprise came to be founded, how it is branching out to refurbish a wider range of items such as sports goods and vacuum cleaners, and how he hopes to turn “refurbished” into a new product category that is “the cool, smart choice”, as well being as a vital step in the development of the so-called “circular” economy.
ideaXme interview with Kilian Kaminski co-founder refurbed
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: Welcome to ideaXme. I’m Neil Koenig. Draws like this (a drawer full on old and used electronic devices) are sadly, an all too familiar sight across the globe. One study estimates that in Germany alone, there are 200 million old mobile phones going to waste in this way. Now, a company called refurbed is trying to breathe new life into old devices. I met one of the enterprise’s founders, Kilian Kaminski, at this year’s St. Gallen Symposium organised by the students of St. Gallen University in Switzerland. I began this interview with Kilian for ideaXme by asking him to tell us a little more about himself and his enterprise.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:01:04] My name is Kilian. I’m one of the founders of refurbed, originally from Hamburg in Germany. I have lived and worked quite a while abroad. I did my master’s degree, for example, in Shanghai and in London, and then started my professional working career at Amazon in Munich. I was in charge of launching the Amazon refurbished program in Europe. That was my first touchpoint with refurbished products, where I really fell in love with these products because I’m convinced that they have to be part of our future, and circular economy must be the new reality also for all business sectors. So, I was really convinced, but also realised quite fast that Amazon is not really focusing on refurbished products because their business model is built on selling new products with their retail partners, with the brand collaborations that they have. So, I realised that if I want to do it right, I have to do it somewhere else.
The Importance of Promoting the Circular Economy
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:01:50] I founded my own company, refurbed, together with my two co-founders, Peter and Jürgen, around seven years ago. In my role as co-founder of this business, I regularly take part in conferences and other events to promote the circular economy, ensuring that this mindset of business understanding regarding more circularity, impact creation is regarded as really important. It has to be our future. And this is why I spend parts of my personal and private time as well to really make a change here.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:02:21] Just going back to the beginning of your career, when you were at Amazon, and they started going into refurbished products. Why did they do that? They were seeing demand?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:02:35] It was mainly driven by the realisation that customers were searching for refurbished products on their website, on the Amazon interface, but they didn’t get any results. So, these customers left the Amazon platform, went to Google and purchased somewhere else. And as Amazon wants to be the everything stores where the customer can get everything that they want, they kind of had to create this product selection as well on Amazon to ensure that these customers are able to find and purchase these products on the Amazon platform. But they didn’t want to kind of guide customers which are willing to buy a new product, to the refurbished selection. It was just made for customers which were actively searching for it, but it was not the goal to really change the consumer mindset of Amazon customers, from buying new products to the more sustainable option of buying refurbished products in this kind of created the frustration on my personal side, who was in charge of the program and was motivated to make this program big, and then realising that the constraints about the strategy, which is different from Amazon itself, from a strategic point of view, then for me as a project manager. This resulted then in myself quitting my job there and creating refurbed as a new business venture for myself with my two business co-founders.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:03:52] So how did you go about starting the company?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:03:55] Quite honestly, when I was working at Amazon, I was really frustrated in my role because I realised that I could not really do anything and make it big, as big as I wanted to make it, and specifically also not as big as the potential that I saw in the refurbished product offering. And this new category, which is kind of created between used and new products.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:04:17] I was on a weekend trip to Vienna because I was based in Munich, and I visited a friend there who I had studied with in Shanghai, doing my master’s degree, and we had a dinner together. He was a consultant for McKinsey, the big consulting company, and was mainly consulting big e-commerce players, marketplaces in all of the kind of industries. And we both said together, both frustrated about our current job here at McKinsey, me at Amazon, and we talked, but we both are doing and then realised that marketplaces are a really great business model, and refurbished products are a huge, impactful and large business opportunity. So, we said together, let’s combine, combine our both knowledge and expertise that we have and create our own company which focuses on creating a marketplace business model just for refurbished products.
The Steps to Creating refurbed
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:05:09] This was the first touch point. When we sat together over dinner, had a couple of beers, talked about it, and then just came up with the idea, let’s do it. And then within four weeks of that conversation, we founded the company. We realised that the only missing point was the technical expertise in regard to programming and developing a website or developing a marketplace, online tech presence. And so, we searched for a third co-founder, which is our CTO, Jürgen. His joining then kind of completed our skillset, which I would say is industry understanding, marketplace understanding, strategic and finance understanding from Peter, and then also from the technical and product side, which Jürgen brings into the table, as well as a third co-founder, to really have a combination of skill set which is required to build a company from our perspective at this point of time.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:05:58] I think seven years later, we can really say that this founding structure of three years co-founders with these skillsets, really enabled us to grow to the stage where we are right now.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:06:08] So you had this. You had this dinner with your pal, and then you found your technical wizard. And then I suppose the next stage was getting hold of some products to refurbish. Was it or was it building a website to invite people to send them in? I mean, how did you get it off the ground?
refurbed’s Technical Wizard
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:06:27] I really like the term of wizard because I think he really is a technical wizard. What he built was really extraordinary. I would say specifically in the speed and the quality that he built it. So, it’s huge kudos to him as well.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:06:39] Our biggest task when we started the company was that we had to create a website and a marketplace website. What’s important to understand is we’re not doing the refurbishment ourselves, but we are working together with more than 300 partners which are doing the refurbishment. And it’s kind of like a B to C or B to B business, that means that we do not have private citizens repairing devices and selling them on our platform. So, it’s not a peer-to-peer business. We use professional companies. So, we are not what would be considered a repair shop at the train station which repairs devices. We work with professional businesses which are refurbishing 1000 devices or more per week with the same machinery and technical setup of the manufacturers producing the devices. This automatically creates the high-quality products available on our website.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:07:23] And so we had to create this website and then had to onboard these refurbished businesses, which then would use us as a sales channel of their products to end customers. And then of course, one of the advantages was that when I was building up the program at Amazon, I of course knew these business partners, which are the refurbishers. So, this touch point about getting the supply side on our website and was, I would say, relatively easy, or we had at least a good connection and network already through myself and my previous experience at Amazon, that we could get a couple of partners first hand on our platform offering products. And then the only I mean, of course, it was still a challenge, but the only challenge was to create the demand and getting customers which are interested in buying these products and purchasing these products on our website. So, this was kind of the first big challenge and task that we had as a company.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:08:10] Going back to the beginning, there were these outside companies who were already doing this refurbishment, possibly selling through Amazon or maybe eBay. That’s where I might think of looking first. It’s not the sort of dedicated portal, is it, for refurbished goods. So, this this industry kind of exists, but it doesn’t really have a shop window. Is that what you’re kind of providing then?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:08:35] Exactly. We try to bring this these offerings which are out there in the market but really difficult to find together. And I think the big advantage that we have, because some refurbishers also have their own website. But this industry, I would say it requires a lot of expertise and skilled people of doing the refurbishment. And normally what they do is to optimise it in the regard to efficiency. So that means that they, for example, just refurbishing smartphones and maybe even within the smartphone category, only iPhones or only Samsung products, and with laptops, only Dell notebooks for example. And so, it’s really specialised. This means that if you are searching for a smartphone and a notebook at once refurbished on this individual website, you probably would only find one or the other. So, you would have to purchase from two different places to buy these products. And so, we tried to bring all of these offerings together on one single platform, where we now not only have smartphones or notebooks, but we even have other consumer electronic product categories like smartwatches, tablets, but even extended to new categories like home devices, as for example, a vacuum cleaner, kitchen products like a coffee machine or hoover, or kitchen machines and now even relaunched sports equipment. You can even buy a refurbished e-bike or ski and snowboards on our website.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:09:52] So we really had this vision to ensure that the customers have an alternative of buying something more sustainable and not requiring to buy new. And this is kind of also our, I would say, long term vision that we want to be this sustainable Amazon.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:10:07] And when you want to buy something circular and sustainable, you should in the future go to refurbed and get everything what you need to consume as a more alternative product offering than buying it new. This is the goal that we’re have. And this is where we are really strongly focusing, on constantly extending the product category under this extremely important requirement of high quality, because I think this is one of the most important aspects for success is, to ensure that the customers understand the quality is high. And as you, for example, stated, people would probably consider like, let’s say an eBay in this regard. And I would say the biggest difference is Amazon is a platform for new products, and eBay is a platform for used products. And refurbished products are something different, which is in the middle, most likely much closer related to new than to used. But it combines the benefits like from a from a new product. It combines the functionality, the warranty, but from the used products it combines the price, the lower price, but also the sustainability aspect. Of course, because it’s much better to buy something which was already produced instead of producing something new. And so, we created a new product condition category between new and used, which is really close to new, but has the advantage of more sustainability and a more affordability, which I think also makes it such a success factor in our case.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:11:23] This question of the category is an interesting one. I did a piece a few years ago when I was at the BBC about second hand luxury, the idea of recycling luxury goods, which in some markets, like in France or Italy, is fine. People are keen to buy those products. In the UK second hand has a bit of a negative connotation. Did you find that different markets had different responses to the idea of something refurbished?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:11:53] Absolutely, I think you’re right. Customer behaviour is totally different from country to country. And we also realise that also I would say from a marketing and branding perspective. So, there are the Nordics. Sustainability is a much more lift up I would say area as well. So that means that if you’re advertising the products, about the positive sustainability aspect. If you’re buying a refurbished products compared to a new product, it’s much more well received. And when other countries, for example, like Eastern Europe and the stability aspect I think is not so well established yet. Of course, there’s I think everywhere development in the direction of stability is important, but there the price is a much stronger driver for the purchase decision. So, we also have to adapt it in this regard. And I think as you said, used second hand has a bit of this ditchy perspective. Specifically, when we talk about electronics. Some may think, for example, is the data of the former user on this device. So, we’re really strongly emphasising that refurbished products have nothing to do with the used products. It was a used product when this product arrived at a refurbisher and then they refurbish this device in up to 40 steps. There’s a certified data deletion, then there’s a software check about all the individual components of the device has to understand which components have to be replaced to bring this product again to a 100% functional product.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:13:16] On average, only two components are replaced. And this makes it so sustainable because if a product which has normally 100 components, only two have to be replaced to bring it back to new functionality, of course, it’s much more sustainable. But as you said, this is, I think, the aspect of educating customers and creating the awareness that it has nothing to do with the used products. And I really like to bring it always a bit to this, to this comparison with a car. Right? [00:13:42] Like 20 years ago, people were saying everyone bought a new car. [00:13:46] Right now, I think the majority of the society buys a used car like a one-year car, a car from a dealer, which was used in a bit in the beginning, but had 1000km off. And then you can buy it for much cheaper price. And people would say it’s much smarter to buy a used car or a yearly one-year car than to buy something new of the price advantage. And this is now a cool and smart choice. And I think, our goal is to really bring people there that they say the refurbished offering is the smarter, the cooler a lifestyle choice long term, because it means also the more sustainable choice. And this is the goal of also like a mindset shift I think, which we really want to establish.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:14:27] You say there was already an industry of people refurbishing things for people like Amazon to sell. But now you’re creating a separate marketplace. How do you make sure that your suppliers are maintaining their quality and so on? Do you go and inspect them, or how does that work?
One of the Most Important Aspects of Our Success
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:14:49] For me, this is one of the most important aspects of success criteria for us, because also when you’re looking at the marketplace, we are only successful if customers come back. If a customer makes a first purchase, has a negative experience and never comes back, our business model also from a financial perspective doesn’t make sense. So, you need to have retention. You need to have customers which are not just buying one product but regularly buying products from us. So, the quality aspect I think is the most important one. And so, in our case, it means that we only allow suppliers or partners to sell on our platform after a really strong KYC process where we check, first of all, what kind of systems they’re using for data deletion, what is the machinery they’re using to ensure that the quality is always up to date? We check their financial data, like where they’re buying the products from, so that we can ensure that there are no, let’s say, grey imports or something. But it’s all, uh, official sources for products where they can buy them. And the quality of spare parts, for example, is also under the requirements that we have. So, we created ourselves our own quality criteria catalogue because it does not exist in the market. There is no official European policy what refurbishment means, what it requires. So, we had to build it ourselves, our own guidelines which our partners have to follow. And then as you touched, we visit our partners on a regular basis, but we are also do regular mystery shopping because, I mean, that is always a great perspective of just checking out buying products, checking the quality of the devices and then getting feedback to our suppliers. But what I also have to say, the most valuable and trustworthy and fastest feedback that you can get is from customers.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:16:23] Because if customers receive a device which is not with the quality that they expected, they will complain. And if they complain, they do it through our platform because we build a system where the communication between the supplier and our customers is always through our system. So, we detect everything literally live. And so, if we would see, let’s say, any kind of a spike that there more than usual complaints about the quality, for example, of the of the devices or something, we can directly act and for example, warn the partner of ours, but even suspend the partner depending, of course, on the issue. That means that we have a really strong overview and live tracking, kind of the quality to ensure that we’re only working with the best partners in Europe to ensure that the customers really get the products that have the highest quality that they’re satisfied with. And I think why we are successful. It is also shown that we have more than 50% of our customers are coming from referrals where friends and family tell them, hey, I had this product purchased by on refurbed. It works amazingly well. If you buy the next product, you should check it out as well. And I think referrals such a high referral quote without giving them something for referral. So, there’s no price discount or something and they just do it from their own perspective because they like the idea. They really want to promote it further. And it’s probably the biggest compliment that a company can get. And also shows, I think, quite well that we’re doing a quite a good job in this regard.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:17:45] You mentioned regulation. Should there be regulation? Is there should there be a standard?
The European Refurbishment Association
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:17:51] I personally think it would make sense because there are a lot of also bad actors in the market, I would say, which are using the term of refurbished and selling products which are not properly refurbished with a term refurbished, which means customers for these reasons, may be turning away from the whole category of refurbishment and not only just from this one partner, but from the whole category. And this, of course, also means that the whole industry is suffering from these bad actors. And myself, I’m part of the European Refurbishment Association, which is the biggest industry association representing the refurbishment industry in Brussels. So, it’s a lobbying organisation as well. And I’m vice chair of the board there, where we try to also speak to the policy makers and through the regulatory side to create more standards, more quality criteria for the European market of refurbishment to really ensure that long term, there are guidelines and standards which everyone in the industry has to fulfil at least minimum standards to ensure that, let’s say, low quality partners, bad actors are kind of automatically excluded from this industry to ensure that we safeguard, also the term refurbishment long term to ensure that the customers which are buying that have an understanding what they can expect of a quality for products.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:19:07] What about trade in? Are you going to allow customers to trade their products in?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:19:11] Yes, we do as well. So, we have our own trading and buyback program on refurbished, which I think is really important because there’s a huge issue right now that the majority of people keeps their devices at home. So specifically in Europe, the European culture compared to the US and US, when you are buying a new phone, for example, a smartphone, you are automatically kind of trading in at the telco provider, your old device. In Europe, normally you’re buying a new product, you’re putting your old product in the drawer and that sticks. And these products, phones pile up in your drawer. And so, in Germany, there was a statistic that more than 200 million smartphones and phones are in the draws just of German citizens. That means that we have 80 million people. Not everyone has a smartphone. So, it also means kind of every person on average has 3 to 4 smartphones or phones in their drawers. And when we’re talking about rare resources, right, that we are here at the St. Gallen Symposium where the topic is scarcity there the resources in these devices which are really valuable gold, silver, copper, and they are just lying there without any usage. And this of course, is a tragedy and disaster. And so, we also want to emphasise this waste and motivate people to send back their old devices into the circle. So, trading them in through refurbed so that we can keep them into the circle, getting them refurbished again and allowing other people which are really interested in buying these products to buy them. So, kind of really closing the loop and being 1% circle, that is a really important, um, goal for us. And it was in the beginning as well, one of our targets that we had. So, we’re really happy to achieve this, that we are selling products, but also, we are allowing if someone buys a refurbished product from us, that they can also sell the old device directly back to us as well.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:20:54] What happens if you’re too successful and everybody buys refurbished phones, and there’s just this kind of endless loop of people buying refurbished phones, and people like Samsung and Apple aren’t able to sell any new products anymore.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:21:11] I would love to have this problem. Right now, the refurbished industry is not even 1% of the new product market, right? So, there’s a huge development opportunity still. Also, requirement of really going into this direction and grow this industry. And so, I think we will have a couple of years or even decades until we may be considerably reaching this point. And what we see is that, of course, the product development is also slowing down the innovation of new, you know, products. I mean, you have this, let’s say the Apple, Apple Watch now, for example, as a new big thing. But when we talk about smartphones over the last, you know, decade, nearly, of course, the camera got a bit better, more megapixel of camera quality. Maybe it was a millisecond faster, but the advantage of upgrading your phone got less and less important, which of course is really helping us, because that also means that you don’t need to have the newest version anymore. You don’t have to queue in front of the stores when the product is launched anymore. You’re happy to also buy 1 or 2 generations, previous generations because it’s still an absolutely great product.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:22:18] So I think that, um, it would be great to go to this direction having the problem, but quite frankly, it’s a long way to go. Um, and I think until then it’s much more about on the regulatory side, as we touched before, for example, to go more in the direction about how we can make these products even more repairable, how we can like force also the manufacturers to build these products on the design level like eco design directive, for example in Europe level that they are easier to repair, that they’re easier to refurbish, that they are maybe like working in modular systems, because I think there’s a huge development. And thinking about myself when I was had my first smartphone, I think it was Nokia, Nokia phone or something where we could play snake on it. That was still my childhood memory. And when I wanted to change the battery, I could open the back cover, take it out, and take it back in. Nowadays, I am now the managing director of a company which is in the refurbished space, we have 300 people, and the friends of my parents often ask me like, can you repair my phone because I have a defect and I cannot, I will break the phone.
The Complexity of Refurbishment
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:23:21] It’s so complex to repair it and you need such a technical skill set of really opening the device in the proper way, understanding which parts you have to remove first to get to the underlying other parts. That this complexity also means repair and refurbishment is really complex, therefore expensive. And this also means that the linear economy will also stick as long as possible. Because these manufacturers want to drive the linear economy. They want to replace devices every year they fail. Therefore, they’re launching every year new model. And we have to, I think, rethink this mindset and understanding that circular economy has to be structured from the beginning by the manufacturers. But I would say what we are now doing is we’re kind of forcing them to showcase that refurbishment, that there’s a huge demand for repair and refurbishment, and that they also have to rethink the business models. And hopefully this will also mean that they will slowly start to build up different structures of their strategy and the policy side and the regulatory side of course, also kind of started to force them in this direction, which specifically happened over the last couple of years through the European Green Deal, as one important factor of this movement.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:24:33] And what countries are you operating in at the moment?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:24:36] We are active in Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal, Belgium and the Czech Republic. So, in 11 European countries.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:24:51] What about the UK?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:24:53] We would love to be in the UK. And we were close to launch before the Brexit happened. And then the Brexit made everything sadly a bit complicated. And the biggest issue here is customs, because all of the partners that we have are based in continental Europe. And that means that they can ship their products around Europe without any issue because of the free trade agreement and shipping agreement. But of course, moving into the UK, but also Switzerland, where we are now today having the interview of course, makes it a bit more complex as in the case of Customs and therefore the decision that we had was just to focus first of all on the market, where we can also expand faster into where we can really using the structure that we have, our network of partners that we already have established. And but it’s still, of course, a perspective and a goal for us to also offer our UK citizens and our UK customers the opportunity to buy refurbished products. But we’re still not active there. It’s on the roadmap, but I think it will still take a bit of time.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:25:51] This podcast series, the ideaXme podcast series, is all about people who are helping to move the human story forward. And this conference that we’re at, organised by the students of the St. Gallen University, is all about the future. Where would you hope your project would be in 5 or 10 years time?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:26:14] First of all, we just rebranded the beginning of the year. Like not the brand name, but like the claim, for example, and some of the designs and our new claim is “Rethink New”. And what does it mean? It means that we as a society, we should rethink what new really means, because we are convinced that the new should be like refurbished. So, the new normality should be circular economy and not linear economy, not new products. In our case if we talk about refurbishment, but we can also put it in general in the term of circular economy. So I would think like one of the big goals that we have is that we also want to be a role model for other companies to see that circular, a circular business model, which we have, and that circularity is in the core, in the heart, and was the reason why we formed the company to create an impact and having a positive impact on the environment and can be successful and can really be a business model, which is not just impactful but also economically successful, which of course is really important because that is why all of the other companies are looking at and maybe also considering can they move in a more circular direction just from a financial perspective.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:27:19] And so this is our big goal to really ensuring that we go in this direction, moving there and really creating a case kind of for other companies that it’s possible. So, I would say this is a big, big topic. Circularity will be the new normal. And we kind of also were one of the leading players of guiding the industries in this direction. And then for us as a company itself, I think would be really that in five, 5 to 10 years, you literally can buy everything that you want to consume, circular, sustainable. refurbished on refurbed. And you don’t even have to go to an Amazon or other players in the market to buy products, because we have everything that you want to consume, and you can do it more sustainable and having a positive impact on the planet. And if we can achieve that, I think then I would be more than satisfied. And I think also the planet would be satisfied because it would have a huge impact on the environment as well.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:28:11] And do you see this extending beyond consumer electronics or even things like white goods, washing machines and so on? Do you think it can be expanded even wider than that?
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:28:25] We showcase that, I think, with the first example of, for example, the sports category, where we are now also refurbishing e-bikes, we are refurbishing sports and gym equipment, for example, ski and snowboards, which I think is a great example of like outside the classic consumer electronic categories that you refurbished devices. And what we see as well is that, of course, as we’re not refurbishing ourselves, but we’re working with partners and these new categories, like for example, in our case, kitchen products in the beginning and then household goods now going to sports, it is a development. So, when we started there was no real refurbishment in household goods, kitchen products. There was no e-bike refurbishment. There was maybe repair kind of. But the repair and refurbishment are also something different. So, what we really saw there is that, um, there’s now businesses realising that there is demand for these kind of refurbishment activities and other new categories, which automatically also enables us to onboard these partners in these categories. And we’re working together now also directly with brands. So, for example, we’re working directly together with De’Longhi for coffee machines, with AEG for white goods as you just touched or with vacuum cleaners. And these brands are also now considering how we can be more circular without totally, totally cannibalising our business model. And therefore, they really like our approach of the refurbed platform, which solely focuses on refurbished products, not selling any new products because you have a really different target group.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:29:48] So for them, it’s more an additional to the actual business that they normally have just selling new products but increasing also their offering and their entire customer demand which want to buy more sustainable also offering these products. I think this is the really interesting part which will enable us to even further expand. And we even, you know, had first conversation with furniture companies, which I also think about how we can, refurbish furniture and specifically I would say like more luxury brands because of course refurbishment costs money and so on. But even they are now considering how we can go into the circular economy. So, I think there will be a lot of opportunities in the next couple of years of totally new categories, which we are not even having in mind, which will have refurbished offerings. And we are more than happy to directly be on the forefront of starting with them together and bringing their refurbished offerings, then to the customer group, which we already have, which understands what refurbishment means and is always happy to purchase refurbed products instead of buying them new.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:30:51] The future circular?
refurbed’s Mission of Having a Positive Impact on the Planet
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:30:53] I’m totally convinced that it must be. It will be, but it also must be. If you look at the disaster across the globe. I think there’s no way around circularity, and therefore we are building the company with the sole mission of having a positive impact on the planet. And we’re really happy to see that more and more business, specifically Start-Ups, are now also going into this direction about creating a purposeful and impactful business model. And really having a sustainability strategy in the heart of the business are like a born from sustainability strategy and business. And so, we now also have to use this momentum, I think, to also, challenge the big players, the big companies, the corporates, the global businesses to understand that these new companies coming in and they could take market share if they don’t react as well, because we only can really fight climate change if we all do it together. Not just the Start-Ups, not the scale ups, the growing businesses, but also the mature businesses that are already in the market have to be more circular. The policy and the politics. The governments have to really and embed circularity in all the strategies and the policies, but also, we private citizens, we really have to rethink how we are consuming, how we are travelling, how we are eating food, what kind of we’re buying. I think all of this mindset shift has to go over all the different parts, and we cannot just finger point anymore and expect for someone else has to act. We all have to do our part and then we will be circular. I think that we have the opportunity of saving our beautiful planet for future generations.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:32:29] Kilian Kaminski, thank you very much.
Kilian Kaminski, refurbed: [00:32:32] It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for your time.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:32:35]
LINKS Refurbed http://www.refurbed.com Kilian Kaminski 
/ kiliankaminski St Gallen Symposium https://symposium.org/
Interview credit: Neil Koenig, former BBC Producer and now ideaXme board advisor.
If you enjoyed this interview check out our discussion with Curator, Marcello Dantas.
Neil Koenig: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilkoenig/
ideaXme links:
Connect with the founder, Andrea Macdonald.
ideaXme is a global network – podcast on 12 platforms, 40 countries, mentor programme and creator series. Mission: To Move the human story forward™. Our passion: Rich Connectedness™!
