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

[00:00:20] Barry O'Kane: I'm Barry, the founder of HappyPorch, where we provide software engineering expertise for a more circular economy.

[00:00:27] Tandi Tuakli: And my name is Tandi and I've been working in fashion and technology for nearly 20 years. I help brands create circular business models that generate additional revenue from existing products while reducing their environmental impact.

[00:00:40] Barry O'Kane: In this episode, we are joined by Andrew Rough, who is the CEO of Advanced Clothing Solutions. ACS are enabling fashion brands and retailers to join the circular economy with an entire reverse logistics platform covering sorting, cleaning, repair, rental, resale, and more. This was an amazing conversation and we covered so much. Was there anything in particular that stood out for you, Tandi?

[00:01:01] Tandi Tuakli: Well, Andrew addressed one of my major pain points when it comes to launching circular pilots which is how do you expand into different regions. And I thought Andrew gave a great answer,  not only about the future of ACS, but exactly how they address that problem.

[00:01:18] Barry O'Kane: I absolutely agree, and one thing that really stood out for me was when we were talking about their approach to the technology, and he talked about being technology or platform agnostic, enabling them to sort of plug and play with any player out there, whether that's from a shipping and reverse logistics point of view, or from the ecommerce platforms and the customer touchpoints point of view, but being able to say internally we have a very clear API, or it's really structured, it's already there and that we can integrate with all of these things really, I think, powers the flexibility and the scale that they are and can reach.

So I found that really exciting.

[00:01:54] Tandi Tuakli: Yes, indeed.

[00:01:55] Barry O'Kane: Without any further ado, let's meet Andrew.

[00:01:59] Andrew Rough: Good afternoon. My name's Andrew Rough. I'm the Chief Executive Officer at Advanced Clothing Solutions. Advanced Clothing Solutions is Europe's largest operator in the circular fashion solution space. We work with brands and retailers and allow them to offer their customers different ways of interacting with fashion, apparel and footwear. We've been in operation now for just short of 30 years. We started off as a menswear rental company, back in 1997 where the founders of the business bought Highland wear outfits, which they would rent to retailers who would then rent to the end user. And that is the background and DNA of the business. 

It's all about garment longevity, keeping clothes in circulation. I’m a strong believer that people should have access to fashion and apparel rather than ownership. We've seen that in lots of different sectors and I don't see why it doesn't move over into to fashion. We all are very aware of the impact that the fashion industry has on our environment and our planet, so we do need to change that. But also we are very aware of the amount of waste that is currently apparent within the fashion industry, which is costing brands and retailers.

What we're trying to demonstrate to brands and retailers is that circular fashion solutions should be part of their strategic objective because it makes commercial sense. It can generate strong revenues and profits for them and reduced waste for them.

[00:03:40] Barry O'Kane: Brilliant. Thank you. I'm really pleased to have you joining us on this episode of the podcast. Partly because of exactly what you said, there's so much we can talk about and the service and the strength that ACS offer but also because in several other episodes, several other folks we've spoken to, have mentioned working with you or said you must make sure that you include ACS in this season. 

This season of the podcast is all about rental, which I want to come back to but I do know that also rental is just one part of, the sort of ecosystem or everything that you do. So I'm interested to hear a little bit more, about all the different aspects and all the different services and different things that you do within ACS.

[00:04:16] Andrew Rough: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so traditionally we were a rental fulfillment partner. But we've expanded into different circular solutions, which includes fulfilling resale options for brands and retailers as well as e-commerce and repair. And it goes back to the concept of allowing us to support brands and retailers on their journey of moving away from linear options to circular options. 

Rental has traditionally always been associated with occasional wear, renting for a special event. But there's also a strong argument that it becomes part of your normal wardrobe. And having access to a virtual wardrobe is very exciting. Allows people to get access to clothing items that they might not necessarily be able to afford. Also, it has the benefit of cutting down space requirements in accommodation, which is obviously an increasing issue across the planet but also from a brand or retailer's perspective, it's allowing them to interact differently with their customers. There's strong commercial reasons to do that. 

On the resale side, we work with some really strong global brands in assisting them to offer secondhand clothing to their customers or vintage clothing or pre-loved clothing, whatever terminology you want to use. It is clothing that has been used or maybe been damaged as part of the normal sales cycle.

And it's not just clothing, it's apparel, it's fashion, it's also footwear. And the secondhand market is growing exponentially. It's the quickest part of the fashion industry that's growing. However, it's been dominated by the marketplaces. Marketplaces such as eBay, Depop, Vinted, Vestiaire Collective, Poshmark. They're the ones that are driving this growth. And if you think about that process or sector, the fashion brands and retailers are missing out on all that income. Because for example, if I engage with you on eBay, Barry and sell something to you, then that's an interaction between you and I. The item that we sell between us, there's no revenue share for the brand. So they're missing out on that secondary and third income. They're in a completely separate swim lane to what's actually going on in the fashion industry. So what we try to do is to help the brands get into this space.

And the attraction for a customer is that they're getting access to clothing that they wouldn't necessarily be able to afford at a full price. They're also getting the advantage of buying it from the brand directly. So therefore they're getting authenticity. From the brand's perspective, they're actually getting the opportunity to manage how their brand is presented in the secondhand pre-loved market, which they can't on a marketplace. They have the ability to attract new customers to their brand. 

We work with The North Face. They've shared with us publicly that 50% of the customers that come to their renewed resale program are brand new customers to North Face. And of that 50%, 50% convert to full price customers, so it's a great way of attracting new customers to your brand. 

The concept that some people had was it'll cannibalize our full price inventory is actually incorrect. It's a way of attracting new customers to your brand and you are able to manage it, and you are able to control the way that's presented to your existing customers and potential customers rather than losing that to the marketplace. 

[00:07:53] Tandi Tuakli: Sounds like you've laid out there quite a few benefits for both the customer and the brand. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what you offer brands in partnership as to them taking these kind of services in-house?

[00:08:08] Andrew Rough: Yeah, so we offer the full scale support. In very simplistic terms, we receive inventory. We inspect it, we will then decide on the condition of that garment, what we can do to that garment. So we can then clean it, we can repair it, and then we can photograph it, and then we can present it on a platform, whether that's owned by the brand or whether they choose to select it to be presented on a marketplace.

So we have the knowledge to deal with the actual item, but we also have the technology to be able to photograph items and then multilist them over a variety of different marketplaces, whether they're branded marketplaces of the brand or whether they are actual public marketplaces of which I mean unbranded like eBay or Depop.

But the issue that you've got with the likes of the unbranded marketplaces is that you're competing with bedroom sellers, that drives the price down. It's just because the individual seller doesn't have the same cost base that we have. So therefore they decide one day to clear out an item in their closet. They take it out of the closet, photograph it, and then present it. So they're able to do it at a lot lower price. 

But as I said, that bedroom seller, there’s no revenue being earned by the brand in that transaction. And also, there's a strong argument by being on a peer-to-peer marketplace, it's actually devaluing the item for the brand. And we can prove that in some cases the branded marketplace is getting 10 times the revenue per item than it would be on a normal marketplace. And as individuals we're buying items from another seller who might not necessarily have checked the authenticity of that item in the first place. 

The other services that we offer or repair is a very attractive added value for brands and retailers to offer their customers. Whether that's in warranty repairs or out of warranty repairs. And we work with some really strong brands in that place as well. And then we also work with some brands purely on items or refreshing of items, say some inventory that has been damaged as part of the normal sales cycle, items that come into the UK from suppliers, which actually need to go through some kind of process before they can be presented to the customer. So we offer a variety of different services, but they all fundamentally go back to our core skillset, which is extending longevity of a garment. 

I think what we're trying to demonstrate to brands and retailers is that try and change the view that an apparel item or a footwear item is an inventory item. It actually should move up the balance sheet to be a fixed asset, which will have many users over its lifetime because we've seen the growth of secondhand marketplaces, which are able to get significant value. If you look at the sneaker industry the amount that is in that industry for vintage, prestige items is quite significant and a really interesting aspect where we can actually assist brands with that and get into that space as well.

[00:11:25] Tandi Tuakli: So it sounds like you're enabling brands to do both rental and resale, and potentially even offer a repair service since you're dealing with multiple business models and also it sounds like a variety of products from kilts to baby clothes, to shoes. How exactly has technology helped you guys operationally to be able to manage all those things?

[00:11:49] Andrew Rough: Yeah, it's a really good point. We use RFID technology and we've done quite a lot of different projects on that because typically RFID was quite expensive. And if you are having to wash an item, you have to use certain RFID tags that are durable under wash. And that's quite a large investment.

So traditionally we have used that in the rental space which is taking the traditional barcode, which was a heat sealed barcode placed on a clothing item. But the issue that you have with that was that you have to have line of sight. So you would have to have a scanning gun, and then you would have to maybe open up the jacket or the dress item and then scan it. But with RFID, it just flows through the facility and allows us to track the items. What we've invested in quite recently or I say recently, over the last 12 months as we've grown our resale arm, is being able to use RFID technology in resale items. And that's been a big step that we've made. 

We've done a lot of work. We've worked with some large RFID manufacturers to actually take us to the next level on that, and we're now in a position to offer RFID technology, not just on rental, but also resale items, which is really exciting and it allows us to be able to provide some really strong data to brands and retailers. We collect a huge amount of data or I’ll be very candid, we traditionally haven't been very good at actually communicating that data, but we're making big steps forward on that because we've been able to identify some common faults in items that we've received as part of a resale proposition, which the brand has then being able to go back to their supply chain and say There’s a common fault here that's been identified, then that's actually changed the way that they've had their sourcing of the items. 

So that's a sort of added benefit of a circular fashion solution because you can identify items that have a common fault or an item that has a repetitive issue because of the way it's been washed or a type of zip, all those kind of things that you wouldn't necessarily be able to monitor during the normal linear retail model because if you think about that the traditional model was that the manufacturer the retailers or brands would receive inventory then sell it, but they wouldn't get any feedback on what happens to those items once they've been sold. 

The advantage of a circular fashion solution is that you're constantly getting information about your product because by its very nature, it's circular. It keeps them coming around and being shared with lots of different users, so that's been a challenge for us, but an interesting challenge to increase our technical capabilities to be able to provide more data on that. Then fundamentally we've used a lot of technology in the way that we clean and process garments. We use ozone technology. Ozone technology allows us to sanitize items to medical standard. If you then compare that to the linear model, when we've traditionally went into a store and tried something on there's no guarantee that the item that you were trying on would've been sanitized before you trying on in the previous wearer. 

But items that come through our facility, we sanitize all these items and given what we went through in 2020, I think that's a really quite big step forward for the fashion industry. And also it extends the life of a garment because the traditional process of cleaning garments involved submerging an item of clothing and liquid and putting it through a mechanical action. That mechanical action and liquid has a detrimental effect on the garment. The beauty of ozone is that it sanitizes and it removes odors. It's O3, it tackles carbon. Carbon traditionally is what body odor is attached to.

Actually removing that smell that has often been thought as a barrier to rental or pre-loved or resale, we can demonstrate to our customers and therefore to the end user that misconception is completely removed by partnering with someone like ACS.

[00:16:02] Tandi Tuakli: Yeah, I can actually attest to having received some feedback regarding the wearability and also durability of our products from your team, and found that was not only helpful for me in order to understand what products work best with rental, but also passed that on to our design team who made improvements to our products, which are better, not only for rental then, but also just for the customer because as you said we don't get to see what an item looks like eight months after wear or after 10 users or something like that. So I definitely know the value of that data. 

I'm wondering, in terms of resale, what kind of data are you collecting that might be valuable to your partners?

[00:16:41] Andrew Rough: Yeah. Certainly through resale we identify, again, common faults in items. In some situations we are receiving inventory directly from the distribution center of a brand. Those items could actually be shop returns. They could be items that have come through the supply chain process. We've been able to identify common issues and again, feeding that back and providing a feedback loop to the brand and retailer depending on what the item is. 

In terms of data we can demonstrate the different cleaning techniques that we've used and what type of different cleaning techniques maybe need to be used to get a footwear item into a condition of sale or it could be a outdoor jacket into a condition of sale or a fashion item, a dress. So that's all real powerful data that we are now collecting on site from as soon as we receive the item into our facility and we are receiving that item with no pre-sort completed by the brand. So it is very much we receive inventory in boxes on pallets, and we then inspect it. And that's a valuable way of actually, once you can collect the data, providing a feedback loop to the brand or retailer because in a lot of situations they don't actually know what's in their DC.

I know that sounds a bit bizarre, but because the amount of returns that are generated under the current model of fashion it's inevitable that they'll lose control over what fashion items or apparel items are actually sitting in their DC because traditionally, the 3PLs that have serviced brands and retailers are focused on outbound. Their return specialism is very low. They don't like dealing with returns. So the items come back and then if they think We can't really do anything with that item, we'll put it in that box over there. It doesn't take very long between that box over there, gets full up and then put on a pallet racking and everyone has no knowledge of what's in there. That's what happens.

[00:18:42] Barry O'Kane: It's one of the frustrations when you look at from a systems level, like what circularity can offer and the fact that we are, we in the broader sense have really optimized to the millimetere, the outbound, and then there's only a few people like yourselves and others who are actively thinking about optimizing the rest of the other, not just the return, but the continuing cycles.

I just wanted to give us some context there because and maybe we can include some photographs and I know there's a video on your site of your facility. But just to give us some context of the scale and the numbers of, that you're working with.

[00:19:14] Andrew Rough: Yeah, of course. Our facility, we're processing over 6 million clothing items a year. That gives you a sense of the scale of what we're handling. And therefore we have the opportunity to offer scale to any brand or retailer that wants to offer circular fasting solutions, whether it's rental or resale or repair. We're in a very unique position. I'm not aware of any other facility of our type in the world. 

If you think about the largest rental company in the world, it's Rent the Runway, but they purely do rental. If you think about the largest resale, from my understanding, it's ThredUp but they purely do resale. We offer lots of different circular solutions because we are dealing primarily with the UK, but we can also service Europe. I think there's a misconception post Brexit that we can't service Europe. That's not correct. The cost of shipping is really quite low between the UK and Europe. And there is no reason why we can't look after inventory and service European customers from the UK. 

So from a sense of scale, we're processing 6 million clothing items a year, and also we're only running at a third of capacity. We basically run one shift. We're not running 24 hours. We have the capability to run this facility over 24 hours. I would love that if that was the case, because that would demonstrate that so many other brands are moving into this space. So we currently employ about 150 people, which is really pleasing. We are based between Glasgow and Edinburgh but we service to all of the UK. 

We are very proud of the amount of people that we employ. We're a real Living Wage Employer. We employ a lot of people from disadvantaged backgrounds. We employ a lot of people with disabilities and also refugees. And we are a B Corp. Our B Corp score was in the top 10 of UK companies. And if you think that B Corp is across so many different sectors, including consultancies, considering what we do with items of clothing or apparel or footwear where we use a lot of energy and a lot of chemicals and a lot of water, I think it's a fantastic achievement for what we've done. We're doing it and recognizing the planet and people at the same time as obviously generating profit for our own shareholders. Because we've got to recognize that for something to become a long-term strategy, we've got to demonstrate that everyone that's in the process is actually generating as much value as they possibly can for their own shareholders.

[00:21:46] Tandi Tuakli: I'm wondering, you just spoke just now about generating value and I'm imagining that in order to be able to be processing like 6 million, that's amazing 6 million items a year you rely heavily on being efficient, and I'm wondering the kind of systems that you use in order to make sure that, products go through the life cycle as quickly as possible and get to a customer.

Did you have to create those systems or exactly how were you able to find the technology to make that possible?

[00:22:16] Andrew Rough: Yeah, I certainly can't take credit for this. It was a big team effort. A lot of the technology that we have within ACS is proprietary. We've created it ourselves. The warehouse management system that we have, we developed in-house. We have an automated pick and pack system, which is a system that is in use and used by lots of different brands and retailers. However, we built it so that it could be used for both outbound and inbound. So that's how we changed it. A lot of the traditional laundry services that we had, we've evolved ourselves. 

The introduction of ozone technology was very much an initiative and we've worked a lot with local universities and academia to support us with that. We've also worked with people like UKFT to assist us with these areas where we've looked at defined projects because we're constantly looking at evolving our own processes to make us more sustainable, but to also make us more efficient and also to reduce the amount of cost. Because one of the challenges that we face is that a lot of the brands and retailers that want to get into circular solutions consider it as a cost base, but it isn't it.

They need to expand that and consider what kind of revenue can be generated from an item that traditionally was waste. And we all know that waste costs. I'm not aware of any waste stream that doesn't have a cost associated with it. So there needs to be a bit of a mindset change within the brands and retailers to realize that they shouldn't be doing circular solutions for sustainability reasons, because then it won't last. They’ve got to firmly believe, and we can help them recognize this, that they can make money out of this to increase the value for their shareholders as well as having it from a perspective of improving their sustainability credentials, which ultimately as users of our planet is really important.

[00:24:16] Barry O'Kane:  I wanted to go back and explore a little bit, when you were talking about the technology and the RFIDs tech that you've introduced because I think you hinted at two aspects there, one internally so tracking internally and efficiency and that allowing you, I assume, to have data that allows you to look at efficiencies and scale and in order to enable 6 million a year. 

But then also we touched on the data that you can give to whether that enables you to give back to brands. One question I was wondering in all of that is the difference between a rental product where you're getting repeating data, coming back, so you've got the internal data written there and then a resale product. And you touched on introducing this new idea of RFID labeling the resale product as well. So I wonder, can you touch a little bit more on that and how that works when potentially that resale product then moves on, beyond the ACS environment?

[00:25:05] Andrew Rough: Yeah, rental and resale, fundamentally, you could argue that they are the same. They just have a different time period associated with them.

So if you go back to the initial concept of having access to clothing, you're having access to clothing both through rental and resale. Rental just traditionally has been a shorter period of time. Rental is all about asset utilization. Very strong asset utilization. So therefore you want to get many wears of the same item and therefore you can invest more in the RFID technology in that because you're holding onto that garment for longer where a resale item you may be only have a touch point where with a jacket for while you have it on the facility and then it's sold to the next user, and then you've got no guarantee that next user might return it or they might keep a hold of it forever. 

So therefore you wouldn't necessarily want to invest the same amount of money in the RFID technology in a resale item as you would in a rental item. So the cost for RFID items that we were putting for a laundry unit were quite prohibitive for the resale. But we've managed to work with that with the providers to bring that down, which makes it very attractive. 

The other thing that we've looked at is, and lots of people are talking about it, digital passports. So RFID is a really interesting technology for the way to control the inventory item. But the end user of the item doesn't necessarily want that kind of information. I’m a strong believer that ultimately the end and you can already see it, that end users want to get more information about where that item was originally manufactured. Who manufactured it? Did it have a previous owner? Who actually repaired it? Was it under warranty? So all the items that traditionally maybe you would've got in a MOT book in your car should transfer itself to the fashion industry on certain items. And that allows us, as the end user to have more confidence in the product that we're handling as being an authentic product and one that's being looked after properly. 

And we've seen it so much in the food industry. Now, when you buy anything in the food industry, there's so much information about where that item has been sourced from. You go into the supermarket and they can tell you which farmer grew that raspberry in Fife. We should have that same information in fashion items. Because you're certainly paying quite a lot more for apparel, footwear items than you would for a punnet of raspberries, but you don't get the same kind of information.

[00:27:40] Barry O'Kane: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent agree, amazing. So just changing tracks slightly, one of the other threads through everything you've talked about here is partnerships and collaborations. What does that look like for you, and not just in terms of the partners and the brands, but the other software platforms and the other tools and the other sort of enablers that you work with?

[00:27:57] Andrew Rough: Yeah, so we've got a variety of different technology partners that we work with. It’s a really interesting market. There's a lot of players in the technology space. One could argue that there's too many and it gets a bit confusing. I do feel that there will be consolidation in that space in due course. It just inevitably will happen in business. 

But we have tended to try and be technology agnostic. It's exactly the same as we are with our shipping partners. Brands and retailers will come to us and they'll talk about shipping, where we ship with FedEx, DPD, the Royal Mail and some other shipping partners, DHL, for example. And it's ultimately how the brand or the retailer wants to interact with a customer, what they want to offer 'cause there is a cost associated with that. We all know that DPD is very good at providing you a very narrow window of delivery which you don't necessarily get with some other partners, but it comes at a cost. 

And that agnostic position that we hold, we've tried to also mirror with our technology partners. We work with lots of technology partners. They all fundamentally provide the same service and they all position themselves differently, but they do provide the same service of how the end user of the item can interact with those items. And we are able to integrate our warehouse management system with all these variety of different tech platforms because it comes back to a fundamental suite of APIs which we then help the partners to link up with, which allows us to process the data that they've received from the end user. 

So we have a variety of different relationships with different tech partners, whether that's in rental or whether that's in resale or in repair. There's been quite a lot of growth in repair technology platforms at the moment. 

[00:29:45] Barry O'Kane: I really think that's a really intelligent and smart approach there. Agnostic. But it also must bring its own little suite of challenges because you're basically running a little software team and then you've got the physical operations and, so it's another little complexity to the business. Or is it? How does that work out for you? What are the challenges and the sort of benefits to doing that, in such an open way?

[00:30:05] Andrew Rough: Yeah. We've learned a lot. So we have standard API suites now which are taking the same data, same information flow, and working with that standard suite to then connect to the platforms.

So we've standardized that process, which makes it a lot simpler and actually really quick to market, a really smooth process now. Back in, sort of 2020, we did a big IT integration with a large retailer that had about 130 different retail outlets with their own order management system, and we, our warehouse management system with their frontend owner management system and it went really well and it gave me the confidence that we were able to therefore take those learnings and experiences to be able to go out and say we did this, there's no reason why we can't integrate with your front end platform. Because it is a platform. Most of it is online now, so it's a front end platform. You don't have the challenges of 130 retail outlets. If you think about it, I always view a website as just one big department store. It's another outlet. And we've learned over the years to be able to make that integration as seamless as possible.

[00:31:19] Barry O'Kane: Wonderful. I'm getting lost and enjoying the conversation. But I am aware of time. So I wanted to finish up with just, I guess forward looking, future looking, especially from the aspects we talked about there with the technology and your real strong and really clear mission on circularity, what's next for you and where would ACS like to go over the next X period of time?

[00:31:39] Andrew Rough: I strongly believe and passionate that circular fashion solutions should be part of the strategic objectives of any brand or retailer. We'll still be able to get access to clothing items 'cause fundamentally, when you put something on in the morning, it makes you feel better about yourself. 

And therefore allowing people to get access to clothing or footwear or apparel that they might not necessarily be able to afford at full price is a good thing. People should be able to get access over ownership. Where I see ACS as part of that equation as being a really strong player that can enable that change in the sector. 

I see that resale is a really interesting area of circular solutions and that's what the brands are really interested in. They're really starting to consider it as part of their strategic objectives. And we can see that with the brands that we're talking to. And we can also see how strong resale is in the US And I'm a firm believer that if it works in the US it would inevitably come to the UK. And then it will go into Europe. It's that sort of domino effect. 

We will continue to power circular solutions, from a perspective of being the main player in the UK by a long way. I would like to replicate that in Europe as well. And really look at how we can take this facility that we've got here and maximize it to servicing Europe as well. Then there's no reason why you can't expand that geographically further on as well. Because as more and more brands get into this and there's a bigger and bigger demand for what we do, then there's no reason why we should restrict us to a geographical place that we're currently situated. That obviously requires funding, but I strongly believe that funding's always available if you've got a really strong business case to show that. 

The shift is happening. I was at a dinner recently and the conversation was firmly about resale, but it was all about it's just a matter of time rather than is this gonna happen. And what's noticeable from our perspective is that traditionally circular fashion solutions were maybe something that the sustainability team would handle, but now it's being handled by different parts of a brand or a retailer. And there's a shift from sustainability to circular solutions, to the main trading director, to the commercial director, and ultimately to the CFO and the CEO because going back to the comment I made over several times, it's not about sustainability. The sustainability is an added benefit. It makes total business sense to do this. And the smart brands and retailers are realizing that is the case.

[00:34:21] Barry O'Kane: And that's what's really exciting about everything you've talked about what ACS is doing because you're solving a really difficult core part of being able to do that and you're able to do that at a significant scale. So that's pretty exciting.

For those listening who want to learn more about ACS and get in touch and find out more, where should they go?

[00:34:39] Andrew Rough: Our website, you can go to acsclothing.co.uk 

Send us an email. And we look forward to hearing from everyone.

[00:34:46] Barry O'Kane: Awesome. Thank you so much. As usual, we'll put all the links, full transcript and everything on happyporchradio.com. 

Thank you so much, Andrew. Really appreciate you joining us today.

[00:34:54] Andrew Rough: Thank you for your time. Thank you.

[00:34:55] Tandi Tuakli: Yeah, great conversation.

[00:34:46] 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.

 [00:35:47] 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 Tandi Tuakli. 

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.

Tandi is a circular expert with over 15 years working in the fashion industry. She's passionate about collaborating with brands to create circular programs that reduce waste, drive revenue, and strengthen customer loyalty.