Unilever Goals Excessive on Sustainability—and We’re Serving to
In the event you’re studying this, odds are you’ve used lots of Unilever’s merchandise over your lifetime. Actually, you’ve in all probability received at the very least a couple of of them dwelling in your rest room, pantry, or fridge at this very second. Based in 1929 via the merger of a British cleaning soap maker and a Dutch margarine firm, this London-based multinational company has stayed true to its roots producing largely private care merchandise and packaged meals—and as of 2024, it’s grown right into a $116 billion enterprise that sells its manufacturers in practically each nation on Earth.
With two to a few billion folks utilizing these merchandise day by day, Unilever’s market penetration and profitability are past query. However such huge and constant manufacturing might be one thing of a double-edged sword—there are, in fact, social & environmental impacts to working an operation of such scale. That is why Unilever has dedicated itself to some of the formidable company ERG initiatives the enterprise world has ever seen. Certainly, if any group is able to “make sustainable dwelling commonplace”—their self-stated objective—it’s Unilever.
Whereas it is a huge effort involving an in depth multi-pronged technique that is dependent upon numerous leaders, staff, companions, companies, and instruments, this piece will focus particularly on the issue of shopper items waste and the way Unilever is tackling this downside with B-Inventory as a key associate.
Extra Stock: A Common Problem
The pillars of the Unilever Compass, what they’re now calling this sweeping initiative, embody performing towards local weather change, defending and regenerating nature, and constructing a waste-free world. Inside that third pillar, there are two alternatives to cut back waste: (1) stopping the technology of waste and (2) making certain the outflow of all extra stock.
Regardless of high-efficiency manufacturing and top-notch demand forecasting, Unilever acknowledged an unlucky actuality: some portion of products produced will all the time go unsold. After inspecting each the environmental affect and enterprise implications of those unsold items, Unilever understood that novel and efficient channels for reselling this stock could be essential to the general effort.
The place Legacy Processes Fall Brief
Traditionally, when Unilver wanted to maneuver out extra items, it could attain out to provoke negotiations with its many separate stock discount channels—a set of liquidators, wholesalers, and brokers that commerce in unsold items. Whereas such companies might have labored nicely sufficient up to now, fashionable global-minded enterprises ought to be searching for extra refined options, particularly given the handful of vital shortcomings of conventional approaches.
Firstly, these old school liquidation companions might supply simply pennies on the greenback for unsold merchandise with little room for negotiation. And as soon as these surplus items are offered off to such consumers, they’ll change arms many occasions earlier than reaching shoppers, and every time the brand new proprietor takes their minimize of the gadgets’ worth—worth that ought to ideally be working for the unique model or retailer.
It’s additionally powerful for manufacturers and retailers to foretell the place their surplus will wind up when promoting to those conventional companions, so if model popularity is in any respect a priority, an organization could be higher off promoting the excess on to a vetted and certified enterprise purchaser who will go them immediately on to finish shoppers.
Lastly and most significantly come the issues of scale and effectivity. Whereas there’s definitely no scarcity of liquidators and brokers ready to tackle slow-moving stock, manufacturers ought to be cautious of participating with too lots of them. Whereas it sounds counterintuitive, the extra resale channels a enterprise makes use of, the extra time and assets it should spend to handle these relationships via disparate strategies together with cellphone calls, emails, shared spreadsheets, and so on. And holding your liquidation companions right down to a choose few comes with a draw back too: utilizing fewer channels—whereas a lighter carry when it comes to man-hours—implies that the entire recommerce technique hinges on only a few factors of failure. If, for no matter cause, a trusted associate strikes, closes its doorways, or just can not purchase as anticipated, then a model or retailer might be left scrambling to maneuver out extra stock as warehouses clog up.
Now that the business-oriented issues are laid out clearly, how precisely does sustainability consider?
The pessimists of the world may take into account monetary success and sustainability to be at odds with one another, if not completely mutually unique. Whereas that is an unimaginative perspective (and an unfaithful one, as we’ll see shortly), a member of this crowd may pose an fascinating query: If the frequent, conventional recommerce strategies are so inefficient, why hassle in any respect? With no scalable, easy-to-use methodology for clearing out unsold stock, leaders are disinclined to make a bonafide effort to enhance sustainability, opting as an alternative to landfill or incinerate their slow-moving items. But when there existed a confirmed answer that might assist manufacturers and retailers obtain each objectives, the cynics may change their tune.
Fortuitously, Unilever discovered one such answer—one which addressed all the problems above, proving itself to be a superior possibility for each enterprise and sustainability.
The Advantages of B-Inventory for Enterprise and Past
In late 2019, Unilever reached out to B-Inventory Options, the world’s largest B2B recommerce market for returned and extra items. B-Inventory has spent practically 20 years connecting the world’s main manufacturers and retailers on to a worldwide community of trusted enterprise consumers who compete to buy high-quality unsold stock that they depend on to inventory the cabinets of their very own shopper items companies. Unilever shortly got here to know the large worth of this method and determined to associate with B-Inventory. As an alternative of soliciting and evaluating many gives via a number of rounds of phonecalls and emails, this on-line market centralizes recommerce efforts below a managed subscription mannequin—and it made all of the distinction.
One chief at Unilever broke down the partnership’s strengths into 5 key areas:
- Value of Items (CoG) Restoration
B-Inventory’s list-and-bid gross sales mannequin forces many potential consumers to compete amongst themselves, naturally extracting the best willingness to pay. Whereas tax writeoffs and donations had been bringing in 0-20% CoG restoration, Unilever discovered that B-Inventory was securing them 55-200% CoG restoration—an simple enchancment. - Comfort & Effectivity
For each public sale that the corporate holds on the B-Inventory platform, both the customer or a third-party shipper picks up the lot from a Unilever warehouse and brings it to its vacation spot. This has eradicated the necessity for Unilever to move the surplus items itself. Chopping out this step saved each time and important logistics assets that might then be put towards transferring round newer, extra worthwhile gadgets. - Attain & Demand
As an alternative of counting on a couple of acquainted liquidation companions, B-Inventory’s purchaser community introduced in tons of of latest, related, and certified—however beforehand unknown—consumers. Additional, B-Inventory expanded Unilever’s purchaser base to incorporate operations with restricted or inconsistent shopping for energy. Below the standard liquidation mannequin, managing relationships with such consumers wouldn’t be value Unilever’s time, however on the B-Inventory platform, it’s as straightforward to promote to a thousand consumers as it’s to promote to at least one. - Pace at Scale
Holding multi-user auctions on a single centralized platform enabled faster, extra environment friendly outflow of products. Between excessive purchaser demand and help from B-Inventory’s recommerce consultants, the answer additionally scales up simply. In a single week, Unilever has offered over 35,000 shopper items via 8 separate auctions, leading to a turnover of over €8,000, though B-Inventory might simply enhance or lower resale cadence as wanted. - Sustainability
Promoting extra stock to enterprise consumers helps these items discover new life within the arms of shoppers fairly than merely taking over area in a warehouse—or worse—piling up in landfills, leaching into waterways, or poisoning the air as incinerator fumes. From an environmental standpoint, rehoming these items is a vastly preferable final result.
B-Inventory Drives Constructive Outcomes
Whereas Unilever overtly acknowledges that B-Inventory was a pure match for its issues and priorities, B-Inventory nonetheless maintains extremely granular efficiency information to permit for steady evaluation and data-backed program optimization over years of partnership. Generally, we prefer to let these numbers communicate for themselves.
From the launch of this system in 2019 via 2024, B-Inventory has expanded Unilever’s base of enterprise consumers from only a small handful of liquidators to practically 1,000 distinctive bidders and greater than 230 distinctive consumers throughout over 30 nations in Europe and North America. Furthermore, about 4 out of 5 of these auctions have been received by loyal repeat clients. However whereas these numbers bode nicely for enterprise, it’s the sustainability affect of this partnership that’s actually spectacular.
During the last 5 years, B-Inventory has hosted over 3,000 auctions for Unilever, with the whole variety of particular person items offered topping 10 million, lots of which might have been destined to finish their lives unused and destroyed or buried in a landfill. If these quantities are powerful to conceptualize, take into account the whole weight of products offered: about 20 million kilos. For reference, that’s roughly the burden of Paris’ 984-foot wrought iron Eiffel Tower.
Is Demand for Surplus Right here to Keep?
Whereas Unilever’s outcomes definitely make a powerful case for partnering with B-Inventory, manufacturers and retailers from throughout our community are benefiting from each record-high demand for sustainable enterprise practices and curiosity within the round economic system.
An in-house survey revealed that 75% of B-Inventory’s consumers take into account sustainability to be crucial or extraordinarily essential to them, indicating that initiatives like Unilever’s do matter. Additional, 65% of consumers surveyed responded that purchasing sustainably is both crucial or extraordinarily essential to their very own clients. Lastly, over 90 p.c of B-Inventory consumers discover it essential to work with firms that worth sustainability in enterprise practices.
Whereas enterprise consumers monitor numerous metrics and work across the clock to run their very own shops, it’s clear that they do have sustainability on their minds once they’re
sourcing and buying stock. And these numbers characterize only one consumer. For good measure, take into account that throughout the complete B-Inventory market, we’ve facilitated the sale of 144 million items over our existence—that’s over 488 million kilos of shopper items given a second likelihood at life within the arms of shoppers around the globe.
The truth that forward-thinking firms resembling B-Inventory are enabling sustainable practices with out sacrificing optimistic enterprise outcomes factors to a shiny future for each our personal community of consumers and sellers and for the worldwide round economic system.
A Partnership You Can’t Afford to Go Up
As shoppers and company leaders across the globe get up to the truth that our purchasing and promoting habits actually do matter, extra companies will comply with within the footsteps of Unilever and start laying out lofty plans for a extra sustainable future. A part of this development is the inevitable realization that revenue and accountable practices are usually not mutually unique, as B-Inventory demonstrates day by day.
The worldwide secondary marketplace for shopper items is hungry and thriving, so why not take full benefit? By way of unmatched purchaser demand, deep information insights, and a suite of sensible instruments and companies, we’ll assist your group maximize restoration on surplus merchandise—no matter class, situation, or amount—all whereas reaching new heights of operational effectivity. And since there’s not a necessity to decide on between boosting your backside line and preserving the planet for future generations, B-Inventory is one answer you positively can’t afford to sleep on.
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