Let’s start with something everyone in sustainability knows and almost nobody says on stage.
There are wonderful, values-driven people and companies out there. We love them. Some of them are our friends. Some of them are probably reading this right now.
They are not the majority.
Most of our economy runs on one thing. Ready? Wait for it…
Profit.
Shocking, we know. But stay with us.
For decades, the pitch has mostly been some version of “please.” Please buy less. Please repair more. Please do the right thing. Meanwhile, the system pays for the opposite. You can’t build an economy that rewards waste and then ask people to fix it with good intentions. That’s not a people problem. That’s a design flaw.
If you work in sustainability, you already know this. You’ve made the business case a hundred times. You’ve watched good programs get cut the moment budgets got tight. You were never wrong about the problem. The system just wasn’t built to reward the solution.
We’re not here to scold capitalism. We’re here to put it to work.
The math nobody puts on the poster
A brand makes money exactly once: when a new item sells. After that, the product gets resold, repaired, handed down and finally tossed, and the brand that made it earns a grand total of zero.
So how does a brand grow? Make more stuff. Then make more stuff. Then launch a campaign about how sustainable the stuff is.
That isn’t villainy. It’s a business model doing exactly what it was built to do. So let’s build a better one.
Your car already figured this out
Your car has an ID number and a history that follows it for life. Every owner, every repair, every fender bender. That record is why a ten-year-old car still sells for real money. Nobody had to feel virtuous about buying used. The record simply made it a smart deal.
Now try selling a used jacket, a dining table or a laptop. “Trust me, it’s great.” The buyer doesn’t trust you, so they pay less. The value is still there. It’s just invisible. And in business, invisible value is pretty much no value.
So we’re building the record that pays
CirqTerra will give every item a record that follows it from the day it’s made to the day it’s recycled. We don’t reinvent the ID an item already has. We’ll pair it with a history we build and keep: sold new, resold, repaired, resold again, recycled.
Now here’s the part that gets capitalists out of bed in the morning. When that item resells at a shop or marketplace that partners with CirqTerra, the record will start a payout to everyone with a share in the sale, including the brand that made it. The brand will earn a small royalty each time that happens.
Here’s what that looks like. A $300 jacket sells new. Three years later, it resells at a local consignment shop for $150. The seller gets paid. The shop gets paid. And the brand that made it gets a small cut, too. Two years after that, the jacket sells again online, and everyone with a share gets paid again.
Read that again. The brand gets paid when its old stuff sells. Suddenly, building something to last isn’t an act of charity. It’s a recurring revenue stream.
Watch what happens to the incentives
When a brand earns on its resales, the jacket built to last ten years and resell three times is now more profitable than the one that falls apart after one season.
Nobody had to be talked into it. The spreadsheet did the work.
That’s the whole idea. We’re not asking anyone to choose between profit and the planet. We’re making them the same choice. Values-driven folks, you’re welcome. Everyone else, you’re also welcome.
And yes, the rules are coming
California is leading the U.S. with laws that make brands responsible for what happens to their products after the sale. Europe has spent years learning how to track goods item by item, and we’re building on those lessons instead of relearning them the hard way.
Brands will soon need proof of what happened to their products. CirqTerra will create that proof with every sale, repair and recycling drop-off, and tie it to the payment it should trigger.
Brands can keep paying for compliance like a tax. Or they can earn from it. We have a hunch which one they’ll pick.
Radical transparency, starting with us
We’re building a brand on telling the truth, so here’s ours:
- We’re early. We have a patent-pending design, and we’re building the real thing now with our founding partners. That’s why we want you in the room.
- We’re a business. We plan to make money. We think that’s the point, not the problem.
- We’re not a resale marketplace. You’ll keep shopping where you already shop. We’ll work underneath, like the card network behind every checkout.
- We’re designing it so we never hold your money. Payments go from the buyer straight to the people who earned them.
- We’ll give 5% of our net profits to the People & Planet Fund, which will train people for jobs in the circular economy. If profit is going to power purpose, it should power people too.
Want in?
There’s an enormous amount of value sitting in closets, garages and stockrooms right now. It’s time the people keeping things in use and the brands making things worth keeping share in the upside.
Good intentions got us this far. Good incentives will get us the rest of the way.
CirqTerra started with a conversation. My co-founder, Erika Carter, already ran a sustainable fashion and home goods business and wanted to build circularity into it to reduce the harm the fashion industry causes. Together, we went after the real problem: what actually motivates business. And, honestly, most of the rest of us, too.
That’s why we’re starting with fashion and textiles. But the same record will work for anything worth keeping in use, from furniture to electronics.
We’re forming our first group of founding partners: brands, consignment and resale shops, repairers and marketplaces ready to help shape what we’re building. Whether you’re here for the planet, the spreadsheet or (our favorite) both, let’s talk.
Value shouldn’t end at the first sale. Let’s go make it pay.
Annette Brown
Co-founder, CirqTerra