Description
Jo Spolton is the founder of Rumage, a brilliant online platform that makes it super-easy for people to find – and buy - exactly what they’re looking for across a wide range of secondhand marketplaces.Jo is a Fine Art graduate and was a professional racing sailor. Her adventures when sailing around the world opened a window, showing how badly global consumption is affecting our planet.On the Rumage website, under a heading that says “let's make secondhand first choice”, Jo explains why she’s driven to do this, saying: “I wanted my children to grow up knowing that as consumers they have a choice. Fast fashion, our disposable economy, always buying new is unsustainable. Buying second hand means less resources being used up, less energy, less manufacturing, less shipping, less landfill. The choice is ours. Rumage.com is here to make it easy.”In this episode, Jo Spolton tells us how she came up with the idea for Rumage, and shares some of the challenges of starting up, including creating a basic test product, getting clear on what customers really want, and the difficulties of securing funding.Jo talks us through her insights on customer trends, and how people are moving away from ownership and towards renting, sharing and subscriptions.
Podcast host Catherine Weetman is a circular economy business advisor, workshop facilitator, speaker and writer. Her award-winning book: A Circular Economy Handbook: How to Build a More Resilient, Competitive and Sustainable Business includes lots of practical examples and tips on getting started. Catherine founded Rethink Global in 2013, to help businesses use circular, sustainable approaches to build a better business (and a better world).Stay in touch for free insights and updates... Read on for a summary of the podcast and links to the people, organisations and other resources we mention.
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Links we mention in the episode:
* A Circular Economy Handbook: How to Build a More Resilient,
Evolena de Wilde d’Estmael is co-founder & CEO of Faircado, a Berlin-based startup that provides the first AI-powered second-hand shopping assistant in Europe. Faircado’s technology helps people find the best second-hand alternatives to what they are searching for online. Driven by the...
Published 11/17/24
Chris Allen is Sustainability Leader and Head of Circular Business Development at Decathlon UK. You’ve probably heard of Decathlon, which is the world’s largest sporting goods retailer, with over 1,700 stores in more than 70 countries. It’s a family-owned company, founded in 1976, and inspired...
Published 11/03/24