Bielefeld startup circuly was one of our successful Accelerator teams. Now, in their first round of funding, they were able to convince Cologne seed VC Venista Venture and angel investors Sebastian Kotzwander (co-founder Grünspar) and Jakob Rehermann (co-founder datapine) of their idea.
Rent, Don't Buy
“Our most recent survey from June shows that 76% of the interviewees find the concept of ‘Rent, Don’t Buy’ very attractive. The growing number of such products, like Grover or Swapfiets, corroborate these numbers. Customers especially prefer the product groups books, recreational equipment, e-bikes and e-scooters, and electronics”, says Victora Erdbrügger. “We also see a lot of interest in renting baby and toddler products from a B2B perspective which is why have also set our sights on that segment.”
In this age, where an increasing number of people wants their products to be sustainable, circuly provides retailers and manufacturers of physical consumer goods with a software that lengthens the lifecycles of their products. “At the moment, there are still too many returned items and b-stock products being destroyed, even if they just have small optical blemishes. We want to do our part in giving these products a second or third life instead of them being trashed prematurely“, says Nick Huijs.
The Next Steps for the Startup from Bielefeld.
Now, circuly must find more pilot customers for their SaaS tool and push the growth of their startup with the help of their investors. Victoria Erdbrügger explains: “Most of our potential customers still manage their rental business with Excel or Google Sheets, even if their turnover is in the millions. With circuly, we directly build on top og our customer’s own CMS or webshop system. In a very short period of time, we can replace legacy systems and generate added value“.
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