BABY EXCHANGERIE: A VALUE PROPOSITION THAT WORKS FOR CUSTOMERS AND BUSINESSES

Puck Middelkoop, circular economy expert and Baby Exchangerie representative, was alerted to the waste–of resources and time–inherent to modern parenting when she herself became a parent: 'It’s overwhelming when you start spending time browsing kids products. A sustainable alternative to buying new for parents would be of great help!’. Julie Munneke shares the same vision and launched Baby Exchangerie: a platform for parents to rent baby products, and for brands to offer their products as a service.

Baby Exchangerie’s model answers the needs of parents who want more sustainable options for their children, who don't want to spend too much time managing baby products and who don’t want to break the bank over products they have no real room or extended need for.

For brands, this is an opportunity to receive recurring revenue per customer per product, to build closer relationships with their users, to learn from the continuous feedback loops that are established as a result, and to optimise the use of their products, which are often already fit for extended use. As their revenue increases along a products’ lifetime, a rental model also provides them with an incentive to further improve their products’ designs to optimise longevity, repairability, and cyclability.

INCENTIVISING CIRCULAR DESIGN

Circular business models promise to do more with less, but not all products-as-a-service business models automatically come with positive impact built-in. Only when a model is designed with the intent to displace new production and consumption, divert products from landfill, incorporate circular design, and build out an end-of-use value chain that benefits people and the planet, can we deem them ‘circular’, according to Gwen Cunningham, Circle Textiles Programme Lead at Circle Economy.

For more than a year, Baby Exchangerie has acted as an intermediary between brands and parents, taking on ownership of the products they rent out, including their take-back, maintenance, redistribution and disposal at end-of-life. To date, they have already enabled 300 products from 15 different brands to stay in the loop longer, with some products already in use for the third or fourth time. In the future, they are also looking to work out more detailed impact metrics to evaluate the positive impact of their model.

Their ultimate aim, however, is to encourage brands to take responsibility for their own products so as to incentivise circular design and material recycling at the end of the product’s life. This is the focus of a pilot with Easywalker, a Dutch stroller brand, where the manufacturer will retain ownership of the products they lease through Baby Exchangerie.

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Easywalker aims to create durable, quality products that can last beyond the average use time a single family would make of them. To make sure their products actually stay in active use for as long as possible, they are now looking to lease models a potential solution. “New business models such as rental have made a significant step in the past year. This mainly concerns making the life of customers easier, whereby convenience and service are included in the price. We want to prepare for this transition by making our products lease-proof” - Tim Grooteman, Managing Director Easywalker