[00:00:08] Jo Weston: Welcome to Happy Porch Radio, the Circular Economy Technology Podcast, where together with leading experts, thinkers, and doers, we explore the intersection of technology and the circular economy.

[00:00:23] Barry O'Kane: I am Barry, founder of HappyPorch, where we provide software engineering expertise for a more circular economy.

[00:00:30] Jo Weston: And my name is Jo. I help purpose driven and circular businesses turn their vision into a strategy and story that moves people to act.

[00:00:39] Barry O'Kane: In this episode, we are joined by Yann Toutant, CEO and co-founder of Black Winch, who are experts in Product-as-a-Service solutions. 

Jo, what stood out in particular for you from this conversation?

[00:00:51] Jo Weston: I think it's what Yann said about the need for long-term thinking, to make PaaS successful in any business, to make it part of the strategy, but also to shift thinking away from selling units to lifetime customer value and that that long-term thinking is essential for success.

[00:01:11] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, I completely agree. For me, that's one of the core tenets for circularity. Another thing that stood out for me was when Yann talked about one of the mistakes he sees when we were discussing the tech stack needed for as-a-service success. So we described it being a mistake to model the tech stack and the systems needed to operate the service too early and it being much better to start with manual processes and spreadsheets and simple processes and to allow you to learn and improve and iterate the processes as the service skills. And then to look at introducing the right software, the right tooling, the right tech, and the right automation to scale at the right time.

[00:01:56] Jo Weston: Yeah, so to like, map the process and then match the tech.

[00:02:00] Barry O'Kane: Exactly, exactly. And so without further ado, let's meet Yann. 

[00:02:05] Yann Toutant: Hello, I'm Yann Toutant, thanks for having me on the podcast today. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Black Winch. At Black Winch we help manufacturers to implement the subscription economy. 

[00:02:16] Barry O'Kane: Wonderful and welcome to HappyPorch Radio! Thanks for joining us.

[00:02:19] Yann Toutant: Thank you.

[00:02:20] Jo Weston: Yeah, great to have you on to talk to, Yann. 

We just really thought we would start with finding out a little bit more about where the name Black Winch came from, how it came about, why you set up the business, what was the problem that you saw and yeah, to understand how that all started?

[00:02:38] Yann Toutant: Yes, of course. So I started in fact as an entrepreneur, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I was lacking the idea, the problem to solve with entrepreneurship. And I realised, during my career, which has been about 20 years into the IT leasing industry, that when we want manufacturers to fully embrace as-a-service, Product-As-A-Service, it has to be in their DNA. It can't be provided by an external party that will make it for them. It has to be a complete integrated component of the company, vision, strategy, operations. It's everywhere. It's in every corner of the company. And so I realised that a lot of manufacturers are willing to implement it but are facing, like a plateau, they quickly plateau due to the lack of integration within the company. So the ambition of Black Winch from day one was to help manufacturers to make as-a-service part of the DNA.

[00:03:34] Jo Weston: Okay and where's the name Black Winch from? Probably get asked that a lot!

[00:03:39] Yann Toutant: Yeah, of course. And I love this question because it's about passion. You need to be passionate. So Black Winch refers to two of my passions, which is sailing and music. So, the link here is the following one: A winch on a sailboat is an extremely interesting piece of equipment. It helps to leverage a lot of forces with very few forces so you can access to, you can trim the sail and get tons of pressure just with your wrist by turning a little winch. So the message is this: 

You can leverage a lot within your organisation by implementing as-a-service with just a little effort. That's for the winch and for the black-when you look at a performance, there's always a lot of people that are dressed in black from head to toes and are part of the show, but you don't see them of course, but they are here on stage, but you don't see them. They are very important in the performance. So that’s the message of Black Winch on stage with you, but you won’t see us, we will be here on stage but helping you in an approach that is not from the stage and helping you to leverage a lot of forces. That's the story.

[00:04:41] Jo Weston: But I think maybe to lead on from that is, it would be good to hear from you what your definition is of PaaS, because I think, for some people listening that might be slightly different.

So could you perhaps explain what that is and how you see it?

[00:04:59] Yann Toutant: So indeed I always say that, when I go to a conference and I ask the audience, give me a definition of PaaS, I will have as many definitions as people in the room. So that's the point. And that's true because there are many definitions of PaaS. Our definition at Black Winch is the fact that a manufacturer will make a product available to a use with associated services, ideally based on an outcome. I'm providing you this technology with this expected outcome, and I will make sure that all the services are delivered. So you reach this outcome. So that's the holy grail of Product-as-a-Service. This is what we call outcome-based solutions where you commit to deliver an outcome with one of your products.

In fact, in this case, the product doesn't count. It's not the problem of the user, it's the problem of the manufacturer to provide the right solution for the existing needs and to upgrade or downgrade even this solution according to the evolution of the needs of the user. That's the holy grail of Product-as-a-Service. It's outcome-based. It's completely fluctuating and it's priced also on the usage. 

Now, if you go a bit below, because this model is quite challenging to achieve for some organizations. So if you go a bit below, Product-as-a-Service is also, in a more simple way, a fact that a product will be made available be priced, including all the services, but not based on an outcome and not based on the usage, just based on the availability.

[00:06:30] Jo Weston: That's clear, but do you have an example of that? If you have one example that you could use that is a good illustration of PaaS, what would that be? 

[00:06:40] Yann Toutant:  Yeah, if you look at healthcare, for example, healthcare is very advanced in paper treatment. So you would have, if you think about dialysis systems, for example to make a dialysis, those systems are being charged now per dialysis. So you don't buy the system, you don't buy the service, you don't buy the consumables, you don't buy anything. You just pay every time you do one dialysis. That's it. Yeah. So it's a complete outcome based model. The manufacturer of the dialysis is not selling his equipment. He's selling a price per dialysis. Full stop. That's an example of a very advanced, a very advanced model. You have models also in cooling-as-a-service, for example, where the commitment or the outcome is a certain degree all across the year in a shopping mall or in an office space. So you don't sell cooling infrastructure. You are not selling airco units. You sell a temperature.

[00:07:29] Barry O'Kane: And a few seasons ago we had Kaer, in Singapore talking exactly about that. That's a really nice example. And I know also we should mention that there's a Black Winch Podcast that you do, the way you talk about this and have very specific use cases in some of those episodes as well.

[00:07:44] Yann Toutant: Correct, yeah.

[00:07:46] Barry O'Kane: This season of our podcast we're looking at rental and this overlap of rental in tech and where that fits in circularity. So I guess there's two questions for you, Yann. One is the relationship, if you see a relationship between as-a-service and rental business models, and then also where you see circularity fitting into the as-a-service model?

[00:08:05] Yann Toutant: So rental versus Product-as-a-Service. The difference is mainly the fact that rental is a very limited usage of a product at a certain period of time. So I'm gonna rent this product, to have access to this product against the price per hour, for example. If you think about a car, for example, rental is really Hertz Lease or Avis, I need a car for one week. I'm gonna pay for this car for a number of days and maybe for a certain mileage. And that’s it. So, that’s rental. And I need this product for a certain period of time.

Product as-a-Service: The difference is that you have this solution, this product at your premises, at your home for a long period of time and you are the only user of this product for a year, two years, three years. And that's the main difference with rental. Rental is really a product that's gonna have a lot of different users during his lifespan. Product as-a-Service will have 2, 3, 4 users during lifespan max.

[00:09:02] Barry O'Kane: And do you see as well that, 'cause you mentioned at the part particularly when, as you said, the sort of holy grail of as-a-service is the fully outcome based model. And that will involve more than the product in most cases. There'll be a service or a monitoring or whatever so I guess, can you talk a little bit about the kinds of services, or what makes it beyond just, “Here's the product, you can access that product for a period of time.”

[00:09:28] Yann Toutant: Yeah, so the level one service is the fact you will maintain the equipment in its best operational condition. You can call it maintenance. It's more than maintenance. It's making sure that the equipment is performing as it should perform. Why? Because you're paid by the outcome. So if the equipment is not performing, you don't get paid. So  it's quite a good incentive for both parties to make the equipment run perfectly. That’s the first level of service. 

The second level of service will be to make sure that the equipment is used to its best , so it's the consulting that comes with it. To make sure that you have the best users of the equipment based on data that is being collected by the user of the equipment. And often this data is being used also to price the service, so it is easy to collect data to price the service but also to measure the efficiency of the usage  of this equipment. 

And as a manufacturer, my role is to help the user to improve this efficiency. Think about industrial ovens, for example. In industrial bakeries, you can measure the usage of this oven the way it’s being heated up or cooling down. Many parameters that could be used to make sure that this oven is being used to the max and for example, that the energy consumption is the lowest. I can give you a very interesting example I've been involved in recently, someone in my family is in the flying industry. So I did some flight from the cockpit on a large plane.

And the engines of planes, they're as-a-service. So it's mainly a Rolls Royce. It’s a very known use case. The engines are as-a-service. But then what they have developed also is that per airport, you need a certain power to take off. And it's different from one airport to another because of mountains around, because of the wind, because whatever. So the power you are going to put in the engine, according to the plane, of course, is different from each airport. So they have developed an algorithm that helps the pilots to choose the right amount of power to take off from this specific airport. So they're gonna use the right amount of power from the engine to be able to take off and to respect safety. 

For example, one safety condition is that the plane could fly on any one engine if they have an engine failure. But the impact of that is that the price of the pay per use will be the best because the engine is being priced by the number of hours, but also the power of the engine that is used. Okay. 

It has also an impact on the kerosene consumption because you will have the best consumption of kerosene. That's a concrete example of: I can sell an engine and it's being put on a plane, or I can sell the way this engine is gonna be used for every takeoff. And that's an example of service to really enhance the usage of the equipment and get the best performance.

[00:12:03] Barry O'Kane: Yeah. That's fascinating. And that's a really nice example 'cause that ties in, as you said, not just the, here's the generic service, but here's a very specific use case, quite advanced. And that has a financial benefit, a safety benefit, so there's multiple benefits stories to be told around that.

[00:12:19] Yann Toutant: Exactly, yeah. The value chain is large.

[00:12:21] Jo Weston: Flying is quite different from a more sustainable and circular world. And I was looking on your website and I saw your mission is to fast track the world's shift to circularity. How do you intend to do that? Or what are you doing at the moment in order to achieve that mission?

[00:12:40] Yann Toutant: The main driver is to change the mindset of manufacturers from units sold to lifetime value. If we are able to correct that, manufacturers will have a complete different view on the lifecycle management of their assets, of the assets they produce. And that, to be very concrete, the principle today of a lot of manufacturers is to offer a product that will be in competition with the next generation in three or five years, because the next generation has better specs. So basically it's specs against the competitors, but against their own product.

And with these new specs, the old product, the previous product is losing its value. It's losing its interest. It's losing its identity. Look at, if you take an old phone, that you've used, after three years, when you get it, you're like, Wow, that's the best phone ever. And after three years, like it's just a piece of plastic and metal. The identity is lost by the manufacturer's roadmap and marketing. The approach has to be completely different. The approach is to offer an outcome based solution. So the product doesn't matter. And when the product doesn't matter, the manufacturer can then create products that will have a longer lifespan. 

By design, by essence, and also create products that they know they will see one day, so they will see them back. Today when a product is being produced, I will never see this product again. Goodbye. No. In a as-a-service model, the product is coming back and it's coming back maybe many times after every cycle. So how do I make sure that when this product is coming back, I can revamp this product, that the next user will be as happy as the first user, as long as possible? Of course, on the phone, on a car, there is a question of identity. People identify themselves, so you're not gonna drive a 20 year old car because it does the job, I mean, for a lot of people it is an emotional connection.

But if you think about an air conditioning unit in a factory, this is another story. Who minds the age of this air conditioning unit and the brand of it?  Nobody. 

So there are a lot of products that are eligible for this idea of the manufacturer providing a solution that is based on his product and its expertise. And this product is designed to last as long as possible.

[00:14:56] Jo Weston: Do you have any examples of that we could share?

[00:14:58] Yann Toutant: Yeah. Of course if you look at, for example, healthcare, I will refer back to healthcare. If you look at healthcare, there is a lot of equipment that is being offered as-a-service to, what I call, prime markets. The US, Western Europe, and then those equipment are then of interest to second tier markets. So they will have a second life in the second tier market. 

And what I've discovered recently is that a lot of healthcare equipment after 5, 6, 7 years of usage, they can be moved from human medicine to animal medicine. So they go to usage by Vets. So as a manufacturer, you can observe this market. Say, I'm producing, I'm selling to the main markets, and then I don't mind. Or you can say, I'm gonna organise the whole chain. This equipment goes to the first user, it's coming back to me, it goes to the second type of user, it's going back to me. It goes to the vet, it's going back to me. It goes to another vet, it's going back to me. It's being dismantled. 

The manufacturer can organize that. With, of course, the risk of cannibalization of their main product. But if you offer it as a service, you don't think about cannibalization, it's the wrong way of thinking.

[00:16:06] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, I think that's interesting 'cause that ties back to what you were saying at the start about how you define or the reason for Black Winch’s like for as-a-service to be a success, it needs to be embedded in all aspects of the business. If you try and add it, or I can imagine if you try and add it as an extra thing then somewhere in the business there'll be a concern about cannibalization or a direct conflict between “we need the money right now”, versus maybe there's a longer, higher lifetime value from the product. So I'm interested a little bit, in what you would see as the biggest challenge for an existing business to have that cultural embed across the whole system? Is that possible even or is it a case of it needs to be treated as a new, separate identity, even within the same business?

[00:16:50] Yann Toutant: Yeah. One of the challenges is the timescale, the time it takes to see the benefits of a model like this. It is a minimum of three years before you start to see the value kicking in. And three years, it is a scale of time that a lot of companies are not ready to address because of their shareholder structure, because of the investors strategy, because of the edge of the top management. Yeah, that's something we see quite often. Top management CEOs of large organisations should have a concern in terms of legacy, but they won't see the result. So the discussions I have very often with board members and CEOs is that it's like a cathedral.

You ignite the construction, but you won't see it. At your professional life. And that's the mindset. It’s about legacy. But you won't get the outcome in your scheme in the coming three years. No, it's more than that. And that's the mindset that is not always easy to embrace. But I think one of the main challenges today is to have a strong vision from the top management to shift the business model to this type of model.

[00:17:58] Barry O'Kane: So how much of your work in those situations is a kind of mindset coaching, consultative versus Here's the operational practicals, here's the tools and the processes and the systems?

[00:18:10] Yann Toutant: It goes hand in hand because of course, it's about profitability and shareholders value creation. So one of the exercises we do with our customers is to define the creation of value, the shareholders value, how to measure the shareholders value created by this model, and it's huge. It's always huge. And then when you are at the shareholder value, it's about the investment strategy to reach this value the associated P&Ls on the three to five years model. So what's the investment like? Get down to the operations, how to operate the model and how to implement, to operate. So it goes together when I would spend two hours with the board, I would start with the shareholders value creation, and I would end up with “How does the contract look like?”

[00:18:59] Barry O'Kane: Do you see as well, or what differences do you see between sectors? A lot of what we've talked about here is some of the clearest cases are B2B, that I've seen. Do you see big differences between sectors or B2B and B2C for successful as-a-service?

[00:19:15] Yann Toutant: B2C has a challenge that the outcome based is not very much the concern of a consumer.

So the consumer will be interested by a spread of a payment plan and the peace of mind because the services are included. Think about wash PaaS for example, which is wash-as-a-service for consumers. So you don't buy your washing machine, you just pay every time you make a wash and you get all the services included. That's quite interesting in terms of peace of mind because you get detergent being delivered. You get the maintenance, you get everything and very often you have three months notice to stop the contract. So for people moving from one city to another, that's the perfect service. But it remains a niche. 

Next to that B2C have what we call “subscription fatigue.” So we all have a lot of subscriptions and okay, another subscription. Another subscription. So the subscription has to bring a lot of value in terms of services and also has to be tailor made.

So you can't have one subscription for all consumers. As a consumer, you have to have the capacity to tailor make the subscription.

What is the average consumption you are aiming for? What is the duration? How often do you want to exceed? How do you want to upgrade, downgrade? It has to be extremely flexible.

Otherwise it's down to a payment plan, and then you attract people who can't pay. Then you have a fraud issue.

So that's my say on B2C. If you want to be successful on B2C, you have to deliver some services that bring peace of mind and you have to address a very tailor-made offer. When it comes to B2B the traction is much higher because there are financial consequences for the user to use solution outcome based. And so there's a business  case attached to it that makes it, of course, much more attractive. And that will, I would say, ease the decision making.

[00:20:55] Jo Weston: It's quite a challenging one, isn't it, for the B2C? I was looking at a little bit about your book and I thought, maybe it'd be good also for you to touch upon what, as the kind of top three tips of how to do this well whether it's B2C or B2B.

Like, what are things that are absolutely essential to make this work. If you could name just like, your top three. If I was thinking about implementing this in my business and I was the CEO, what would be the top three things that I should do?

[00:21:28] Yann Toutant: So the first tip is to have a long-term vision from the Board. That will create the space and the comfort and the safety to make it happen. So it's a minimum three years' vision and you have to have a Board member that is the sponsor of the project and supports it. The second tip is to spend time with your customers and look at the product you provide them, and what they need to make this product work. And this is the ecosystem that you can bundle to make your outcome-based model. You just have to ask your customers, “Okay, I provide you with this product, what else do you need to make this product successful?” If I think about a washing machine, just an example, you need detergent. Okay, which detergent, at which frequency, for which usage, for which temperature you're gonna clean, et cetera.

So you can bring a lot of value by providing the right detergent for this person based on the consumption usage. In an industrial application, if you think about industrial machinery, there will be a lot of services that are being purchased around this machinery to make it work. Could be spare parts, it could be energy, it could be a consultant working on it. The idea is that when you offer as-a-service, you become the central point of an ecosystem that you bundle for your customer.

Look at car leasing. If you lease a car, in fact, you're not paying for a car, you're paying for mobility service because in the leasing you'll have winter tires, [inaudible] window repair in case of roadside assistance, insurance. The leasing company for this car has just bundled a lot of services that you would buy yourself as a driver, they bundle into one price. So observe the customer, observe your user and see what he needs and bundle the services for him by doing it themselves or by subcontracting them. 

And the third and last tip I would give is don't underestimate the resistance of the sales team to sell this offer. There's a huge resistance from the sales teams. Number one, the incentive plan is not well aligned. I always say to companies, we can talk strategy. Give me the pay plan of your salespeople. I'm gonna tell you what is your strategy. And so very often the reward scheme is not aligned with the as-a-service ambition. Because the margin of as-a-service comes in three years from now. So we are used to rewarding salespeople on the margin they create this quarter. But here you have to reward salespeople because you're gonna create lifetime value that's gonna kick in three years.

And that's the challenge. The sales teams have to be completely differentiated in terms of acquisition and retention. You have this beautiful book called Land, Adopt, Expand, Renew about as-a-service. So you need to land with a specific sales team, but adopt, expand, renew is another sales team, is another sales skills, many customer success managers.

You need to split your sales team and the resistance from the sales team will be also the link to the fact that they need to change persona in the organisation and they're not gonna sell to the same person. And very often they have to go higher in the organisation to sell the value because you're not selling specs anymore, you're selling value. That's another type of sale. It can happen with a few champions in the existing sales team, or it comes via recruiting other sales people.

[00:24:33] Jo Weston: Yeah, it's interesting 'cause it really boils down to having a long term thinking, long term vision, whether you're in the sales team or in the management team or an investor, right? That you have to understand that this is not something that can happen tomorrow. This is a long term strategy.

[00:24:49] Yann Toutant: I would summarise: you are not selling a product, you are acquiring a user, that's the main difference.

[00:24:55] Barry O'Kane: Changing track slightly, going into some of the specifics there. So you mentioned the ecosystem of the services, and I'm interested a little bit in the technology and the tech stack that's required to deliver a successful as-a-service service. 'Cause for me, I see a parallel in that ecosystem you're providing there.So if there's these services, then I need ways to measure and track and monitor and so on. 

Is that a natural fit? How would you view the tech stack as the way of delivering as-a-service?

[00:25:20] Yann Toutant: So what is crucial, you need to know your asset and you need to know the consumption around the asset, around the product. So you need to know which product, where, and how it's being used.

That's the core of the technical stack. So this is, first in terms of, for the salespeople, it's about an easy sales journey to create offers.

Because of the complexity of the different services, they need to be able to make offers in 10 minutes and not two hours, because there's a lot of iteration with the customer. So there's a lot of different offers that are being made.

So you need a very good catalog of products and services to be able to help the salespeople to make quick decisions on the offer. You also basically need standardised offers, ideally a good, better, best type of offer. So it's about the tech stack to provide the salespeople the right tool for the offer.

But again, the asset is key. So the starting point is the configuration of the equipment. Once it's being sold or being subscribed by the user, the tech stack that is important here is data collection on the equipment. How do you collect data and  how do you distribute this data to the different stakeholders in the ecosystem? The CFO of your customer may want a certain type of data, your maintenance director wants another type of data. So it's about collecting all this data set and distributing it properly to the ecosystem. 

This data set will also be used as metrics to invoice. So it has to be extremely clear because you don't want to have discussions about your invoices. Maybe before the invoicing is the billing and collecting - the complexity of billing and collecting as-a-service model is not to be underestimated because you bill and collect the whole ecosystem in one price. And there might be flexibility in the pricing with tiers, different levels of pricing according to consumption extract. So it's quite complex, billing and collecting, and it's quite complex to redistribute what you've collected to the ecosystem. 

You can drain your financial team by creating complexity there.

So there's also a technical stack for that. And, of course contract management, asset management has to be extremely streamlined.

And then the last aspect is about reverse logistics. It's new for a lot of manufacturers to go and collect equipment and to refurbish them and to put them back into the market. So the tracking of all the logistic steps for reverse logistic is key also to make it the best customer experience, but also easy to track for the quality of the asset and the value of the asset to put it back in the second hand market.

[00:27:39] Barry O'Kane: And are you seeing businesses who are implementing as-a-service, is it a case of there's tools out there that exist or are starting to exist where they can say, Here's a partner that will solve this. As you said, the complex accounting that's maybe flowing in a different way than traditionally and collecting the monitoring data that you described, are there other sort of services or platforms that are solving those problems or is it still a very much a case area most people need to build their own to solve those problems.

[00:28:06] Yann Toutant: So at the end, it ends up in the ERP.

So SAP and Salesforce, the two main CRMs or two main players in terms of tech stack. So it's very often to build solutions that are able to build, not obviously to build, but there are some solutions you can buy on the market also that will interface properly with your CRM and your ERP. That's the key.

I see both, in fact. I see companies that start by buying from the market, some solutions. And then after the moment they start to scale, they build themselves their own solution. Or you see the contrary. What is my message here? The mistake I see very often are organisations that define the whole technical stack before the first customer.

And then they automate something that they don't know what to automate, in fact. And in the practice they realise that what they have automated has no value.

So it's good to start with a lot of manual processes and basically Excel is the winner at this stage. And then to observe and to automate what needs to be automated.

[00:29:00] Barry O'Kane: That is very clear for, as-a-service on these still relatively new models and particularly relatively new in certain sectors or certain categories where you need to work out or develop the process. It's not “Here's the blueprint, I know exactly what to do. Check the box.” Are you seeing that slowly changing as we get more examples of successful models launching or Products-as-a-service launching? Is there starting to be more of a sort of body of work of places for people to learn from each other and the work that you're doing, for example or is it still very nascent and everybody has to move a little bit iteratively and really do that learning?

[00:29:33] Yann Toutant: It is so specific per industry that it's difficult to define. The principles yes, are common to every industry. I mentioned, for example, what is the tech stack that will be common to every specific industry, but the application of it has so much particularities that we haven't seen it yet.

[00:29:52] Jo Weston: We were also wanting to think to the future and where do you see the exciting future possibilities of applying a PasS, a Product-as-a-service? How do you see this, what's your vision apart from circularity, but how do you see this space developing?

If we could fast forward like 10 years or whatever and thinking about all the other new technologies that are entering this space, like AI. Where do you see it going? 

[00:30:20] Yann Toutant: The summer of 2035, 10 years from now, my vision is that first of all, there's a generation shift. So in 10 years from now, the top management in their forties or their fifties now. So they have known a world that is data driven. And a data driven business is the main trend that we see, of course developing. The value is in the data and there's a lot of value in the data. So a data driven business is going to fuel as-a-service because as-a-service is about, in fact, exchanging data with your users to make sure that they get the best out of the solution that you provided.

So I strongly believe in this arrival of a new generation as managers who have a better vision on the benefits of a data-driven interaction that will definitely fuel as-a-service. 

The second aspect is, of course, linked to circularity and is the lack of resources, raw materials that will drive circularity.

Talking about air conditioning, I had discussions with main air conditioning unit manufacturers. This is full of copper, air conditioning units is full of copper. The discussion we had with them was to say, look, copper 10 years ago was 20 times cheaper. If I would have proposed all my units into as-a-service, I would be the owner of tonnes of copper, where today I have to buy it from the market, at the price that is 20 times more expensive than 10 years ago.

Of course there's gonna be an increase of the price of raw materials and resources, and this will drive the fact that the manufacturer will say, “Hey, wait a minute, we have already those raw materials in our product. Why don't we tap into urban mining or the concept of urban mining.” I'm convinced that we'll also drive the interest of manufacturers to keep the ownership, not of the product, but of the raw materials that are in the product.

[00:32:10] Jo Weston: I see that trend too. And I think also it's quite startling when you look at the list of materials that there are already some materials that have gone. And when you tell people that there are already things that you cannot get anymore, that these resources are not gonna be here forever.

That it's also a new way of thinking for a lot of people, but maybe the next generation are more aware of that. 

[00:32:32] Yann Toutant: You can’t have them as fresh from the ground but you can have them as extracted from the product.

[00:32:38] Barry O'Kane: And that is a nice little sort of segue back or callback to the circularity part and one of the real promises of the circular economy conversation, circular and economy is aligning those business incentives. the material and hopefully environmental and sustainability and conversation. Unfortunately, we are running out of time. I wanted to just finish with one final question, Yann, and that is to give you a chance to talk a little bit more about Black Winch specifically, and for those who's listening should reach out to Black Winch and where should they go?

[00:33:10] Yann Toutant: So our ideal customer profile, as we say in marketing or ICP are manufacturers of products. The industries are IT, energy, healthcare. Basically, this has the highest value. The people we love to talk to are in the C-suite. And the reasons why our customer works with us is three reasons:

They have a customer that says we need it as-a-service, and they have a competition that is pushing them on as-a-service. So they need to solve a case very quickly so we can jump in and be in a, I would say in three to six months closing a deal for them, starting from scratch. Or another aspect is to really design a complete model from scratch when they're willing to make the move. So it'll go with some of the situation, recommendations and implementation. Or the last one is for the one who already have a model but needs some tweaking on some aspect of the model.

Need someone to improve you know, their refresh methodology, reverse logistic, their revenue recognition. So those are the three ways of interacting with our customers. How to find us blackwinch.eu is our website, and of course on Linkedin.

[00:34:13] Barry O'Kane: Wonderful. And everybody will remember the Black Winch story, so the name will stick with them. 

Thank you so much. As usual, we'll have the links, the transcript and everything on happyporchradio.com for those who want to check it out there.

Thank you so much Yann. I really really appreciate your time today. Thanks for joining us.

[00:34:30] Jo Weston: Yes, Thank you.

[00:34:31] Yann Toutant: Thank you too!

[00:34:33] Barry O’Kane:  Thanks for listening. If you enjoy and benefit from these conversations, please help us share with others. Just take a moment to rate and review on your favorite podcast app.

Thank you.

[00:34:47] Outro: This podcast is brought to you by happyporch.com. Whether you need bespoke software development, fractional CTO support, or just expert advice, HappyPorch is here to support your circular economy initiatives. If you're driving innovation and circularity, we'd love to chat. 

Your hosts were Barry O’Kane and Jo Weston. 

Barry is a software engineer, leader, and entrepreneur with over 20 years experience. He founded HappyPorch to help you create web and software solutions that support the shift to regenerative circular economy. 

 Jo helps purpose driven and circular businesses turn their vision into a brand and story that moves people to act. She works with teams at tipping points ready to scale or reposition for greater impact.