[00:00:08] Jo Weston: 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.

[00:00:21] Barry O'Kane: I am Barry, the founder of HappyPorch, where we provide software  engineering expertise for a more circular economy.

[00:00:27] Jo Weston: And my name is Jo. I help purpose-driven and circular businesses turn their vision into a story and strategy that moves people to act. 

In this episode, we're joined by Frans Biegstraaten, founder at BIYU, which is a modular rental and subscription platform designed to integrate effortlessly with your existing business infrastructure.

So Barry, what struck you most about the conversation with Frans?

[00:00:56] Barry O'Kane: The thing that I enjoyed most about this conversation was the story of the transition from one, I guess, type of business to providing the SaaS business. So BIYU was a rental business with three physical stores in the Netherlands, and then they pivoted and are now using that learning and the technology they built and providing that as a SaaS platform for other rental and Platform-as-a-Service businesses. 

And I find that story really fascinating, one, because they've got this sort of, dramatic change. And there's an interesting story, but from a technology point of view, going from building in-house software that's intended only for internal use to then the transition to how do we work out how to get that both from a technical and from a usability point of view into a fully fledged platform, which is the product. And the way he described that and the journey they went through and the approach they had, sort of embracing the messiness of it, I thought was really apt. And is the way I would approach the same problem. 

What about you, Jo?

[00:01:52] Jo Weston: Yeah, I guess I was happy to hear how they were developing the technology from a customer's perspective. So rather than fall into that classic trap of building the technology and the customer will come, knowing they're actually developing the technology with a customer, but also looking at ways in which they can make it applicable to multiple verticals and multiple businesses.

So that fine line between a one size fits all, but also something that really works for all companies in looking to transition or test the waters of having rental as an aspect of their business.

[00:02:34] Barry O'Kane: Awesome.

So without further ado, let's meet Frans.

[00:02:38] Frans Biegstraaten: Hi, my name is Frans Biegstraaten. I'm one of the two founders of BIYU. BIYU is an Amsterdam-based rental company. Started off as a direct-to-consumer rental platform, offering rental products to people, to consumers, mainly. And we provided access to products that people sometimes need. And back in 2024, so early last year we were forced to pivot away from running a consumer rental business and turned and pivoted towards repurposing the platform to a B2B SaaS rental platform.

So we ran our own rental business with three locations for about four years. We've got quite some experience in running a rental business, we came in with zero experience. And we learned a tonne and we made millions of mistakes but we also did a few things right. And so I think, combined with the platform, but combined with our experience, firsthand experience, I think we have an interesting offering to rental and PaaS companies in Europe at this moment.

[00:03:39] Jo Weston: I was gonna ask, first of all, just for the listeners, before you pivoted, what kind of things were you renting from the three locations?

[00:03:47] Frans Biegstraaten: Yeah, so we wanted to be the platform where you could basically access everything you occasionally need. So that resulted in eventually eight categories from DIY, from gardening, cleaning, kitchen to mobility and anything in between. So you could rent an inflatable mattress if you had guests over, but you didn't have a two-person inflatable mattress, to a drill, a saw, a high pressure washer.

But we also had Microlinos, the city cars. We had Teslas. You could rent electric cargo bikes if you wanted to move stuff between your home and your girlfriend's home, or your office and your home. Kitchen machines, maybe I already said that. Games, anything you would need sometimes, but you didn't really necessarily need to own it.

And why would you purchase a high pressure washer if you use it once a year and the rest of the year? The thing is basically in the way. Especially in urban areas where square meter prices are huge, you don't want to use that square meters for storage of high pressure washers and stuff like that.

[00:04:47] Jo Weston: So a little bit like the Peerby model, but instead of people renting from each other, you were supplying the products yourself?

[00:04:57] Frans Biegstraaten: Correct. Absolutely. So if I go back to all the way to the beginning, we were just super curious and we were also a little bit surprised to see that during COVID the streets were basically quiet, but there were queues at the DIY stores.  We were like, how is this possible? What are people doing? So we actually went to Praxis, which is around the corner, and there was queues and lines of people, and they were walking out with edge trimmers, drills, saws and all these kind of products. And we were like, Wow, why are people buying this? Why are they not renting it? Because it's more economical. You make sure you have a good working product and if you're ready, you get rid of it and off you go. And then we started to look into the rental market and we started to rent products from different rental suppliers. And then we very quickly found out like, yeah, no wonder why people are not renting. It was such a horrible process. Like the consumer journey was, like, horrendous. You would fill in a form and then maybe you get a reply within 48 hours. Sometimes we were asked to fax, this is not 2010, this is 2020.

So we were completely like, wow, there's an opportunity here. Because if you compare to the e-commerce situation where if you have an account at Amazon or in the Netherlands at Bol or Coolblue, if you have an account, it's really three clicks and then the product is delivered to your doorstep.

It's so easy, it's so tempting to do it. And we thought if you do the same, if you build the same experience, but then for rental, it's a no-brainer. Why would you not rent if it's hassle free in the same way as linear e-commerce? So that's actually why we started building BIYU.

So Martijn, my co-founder, he came up with the idea at first, and then I joined him slightly later down the journey. And once we got all our ducks in a row, we started BIYU and the reason why we set up our own delivery service, so with our own bikes, electric cargo bikes, electric vans was because we really wanted to match that experience that Amazon and Bol.com and Coolblue are giving you and we did, not next day delivery, we did same day delivery. Yeah. But that's also very expensive. We realised that probably slightly too late, but doing that is expensive.

[00:07:02] Jo Weston: You mentioned that you had to pivot and you were forced to do that. What was the reason behind that?

[00:07:10] Frans Biegstraaten: It's not very simple. It's actually very complicated. But from a high level, basically we couldn't get our funding organized in the way that it would help the company move forward. And it was partly understandable, partly very painful and for a large part, a terrible experience. Because we had to do this from a Chapter 11 situation. But yeah, we managed to get out without bankruptcy, with the trust of the investors. And we're now trying to help companies that rent stuff, rent products or have a PaaS proposition, a Product-as-a-Service proposition to organize the back-end of their rental because that's where we had to build so much stuff when we were doing it ourselves because we couldn't find anything that was fit for purpose. Everything was based on linear, but then you had to hack around it to make it work for your circular business model. And so now we are trying to put that and launch that into the market and get the first customers. And yeah, carefully optimistic.

[00:08:07] Jo Weston: Very good. And those customers, who are those people? How would you describe what types of customers are you working with?

[00:08:15] Frans Biegstraaten: Yeah. Maybe before I answer that. So what we try to do is, as I mentioned before, we try to cover basically any product that you occasionally need. So we have eight categories, right? And what we found and this is a hard lesson, is that, from a helicopter field, that sounds like right, because if you focus on only, for example, DIY or cleaning, you are on top of mind of a customer maybe once a year, maybe once every two years. So the frequency of use would be extremely low. So that's why we thought we need to go but we need to have everything so people have us on top of mind. If they throw a party, they can rent a DJ set and the speaker set. If they want to do some cleaning, they can get a high pressure washer or carpet cleaner, et cetera, et cetera. But what we figured along the way is that the marketing and reaching the target groups of these different categories was a nightmare because the person who is doing DIY is a completely different person than the person that was throwing a party. And it's definitely not to say that the DJ would also rent a hammer and a drill and a saw and the other way around. 

So, what we basically realised that a little bit laid down the line: shoot, our marketing is so fragmented that of course, you're a startup, so you have a small marketing budget, but you had to basically divide it across all these different archetypes of customers. They are in different channels. They are in different communities. They're reading different magazines. They're looking at different websites. So if you want to reach them all, then yeah, you have tiny budgets in all segments and that's not really working. So now with BIYU focusing on helping rental companies to succeed and to organise their back-end, we tend to focus on companies that have a specific niche or a vertical, however you want to call it. Maybe niche is not the right word, but the vertical. 

So our customers are currently in white goods, furniture and Baby and Child. And we have a pretty good pipeline in medical and some other verticals, DIY of course, the traditional, where rental is very much accepted.

[00:10:12] Barry O'Kane: Established. Yeah. And out of interest, the reason you've chosen those, as you've described, is based on your experience, but are you seeing, one of the themes that we've seen through the conversations in this season is how different products and different situations lend themselves to rental more, there's a clear business or more opportunity there. I assume that aligns with the reason you've chosen those sectors

[00:10:33] Frans Biegstraaten: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So looking back at our own experience, if you have to go a gazillion miles to explain why a consumer should use it, you're obviously not in the right pocket. And the thing is that in some verticals, for example, the Baby and Child or Toddler. A lot of consumers are already on the track of Okay, I don't want to buy everything because I'm using it for 3, 6, 9 months and then I have to get rid of it. So trying to find those verticals where it really makes sense, where the business makes a lot of sense. Not because I think, but because consumers think it makes sense.

And you see that with bicycles, children bicycles, you see it with maybe child products, but also with furniture, you see it with white goods because, you live somewhere, you're an expat or you're temporarily there and you need a washing machine. You're not gonna buy a washing machine of 2000 euros. That's not what you're gonna do, but you can rent it for the months that you're there and then you're out and you return the product and it goes to the next one. And so it's the verticals where, if you're honest to results, it makes sense. That's where we're trying to focus.

And the same for medical. 

[00:11:36] Jo Weston: So you provide them with the software to power that themselves. And do you find there's enough customers in these areas to support what you do?

[00:11:46] Frans Biegstraaten: Yeah, obviously we think so. But it's not like a multi-billion dollar market yet, but what we can see is that, I think, around the time that we founded BIYU in the early 2020s, end of, let's say 2018 to 2022, a lot of past companies saw the light. A lot of rental companies started. 

It was a time when circularity was like basically what AI is now, right? So there was lots of cash, there was lots of VC money flowing to these markets. Same counted for us and I think there's been quite a strong shakeout over the last two, three years.

A lot of companies have closed down or they've come bankrupt or they've been bought by somebody in the same ecosystem. And the ones that have stayed and the ones that have survived, what I can see and when I talk to the founders or the CEOs of these companies, is that they are now coming out of a loss or break-even situation. They start to become profitable. The volumes are increasing. So I think, maybe today the market isn't huge, but there is also not a high number of companies like us. But what I can see in the right markets, the volumes are increasing. Companies turn to profitability and they realise, shoot, I've hacked my entire back-end around the linear thing that's built for linear from a warehouse to another warehouse to a customer, and hopefully it doesn't come back. Now I'm getting, not ten orders per week back, but now I'm getting hundreds of orders back every week. Now I need to organise this because otherwise it's going to end up in a huge mess in the warehouse.

So I think we're well positioned. 

[00:13:12] Jo Weston: Presumably the software could also be extended or expanded to include like returns or repairs and that kind of thing as well. Yeah, not just rental, but also anything that needs to loop back.

[00:13:25] Frans Biegstraaten: Exactly. So that's what we do. And so our two key modules are asset management, where you basically set up your product definitions, which is the general description of your product. This is where you set up your hubs and everything. It's more or less the Admin console. And then you have the warehouse management module that helps you to, when a product comes in from a supplier, a new product, helps you to serialise it and to put it Live into your, let's say, your commerce so that customers can actually rent it and when it comes back, when the product comes back you basically scan BIYU ID that you put on it once you put it Live in your commerce environment. And then of course you have, on a product level, defined worksheets, what do you need to do with this product, what do you need to check. If it's the 10th time that it comes back from the 10th customer, you need to do a deep, clean, et cetera, et cetera. 

So we take care of making sure that you know exactly which products you have. Where they are, for how long and when they come back. But we also help you to pick back ship. And when the product returns, we help you to put it in cleaning, repair, refurb, and make sure that you put it back Live and it can be rented again. And you can do that on a product instance level and on a product definition level. So it provides you with a lot of flexibility. 

And we've built this ourselves. So we've built this because we used it, because we couldn't find anything. We had PIM, Product Information Management systems that we looked at, it is a plus one when it comes from the supplier and it's a minus one when it goes out to the customers. There is no plus one back. And when it comes back, it's not new anymore. So it's pre-loved or the second life or whatever our customers call it. But some customers want to rent something that's new. Some customers are perfectly fine with renting something that's secondhand in case of, for example, baby and toddler.

So your product stock, your stock levels and your instances, they need to match the questions and the requirements from the end customer. 

And yeah, we had to build it ourselves. So we spent four years building something that worked like a charm in the end. Yeah. And now we're selling it.

[00:15:24] Barry O'Kane: That's really interesting. And from a technology point of view, I think that is particularly interesting. Because as you said, you built something that was for your own business and operations and so on. 

Tell us a little bit about the journey then of going from, Okay, we have a product that was intended for our purposes and now we're scaling it up to become a SaaS product and a multi-tenant. Tell us a little bit about that journey.

[00:15:43] Frans Biegstraaten: Yeah. So one of the things that we decided with the shareholders when we were discussing this pivot is that, rather than again, spending tons of money on building something and then testing it in the market we really wanted to build, with a customer or with customers because that points you towards stuff that you can actually sell and also stuff that people actually need instead of thinking it out on a whiteboard and Oh, everybody needs this, and then you come into the market and they're like, Yeah, great, but we wanted a little bit more. So we wanted to, basically, build, sell and use at the same time. And that in our case, was difficult because our software system was basically a big monolith which was great for us to use. And of course, there's always some shortcuts that you take, but you don't really mind because you know these shortcuts, you know how to get around them, but now suddenly you need to have other people work with it. They don't know the shortcuts. They don't want to have shortcuts and stuff like that.

We first took out some, that's something that we did anyhow, is we took out the main sort of shortcuts that you can't explain to a third party because they have absolutely no context. That one. 

And then we decided to create an instance infrastructure, sort of hybrid solution where every customer is on his own instance. So it's not possible for one customer to, by mistake, look into somebody else's product stock and the other way around. That's how we onboarded the first couple of customers. But of course, challenges with that are, it is expensive because you need to run two databases or three databases, three environments. And the other thing which is much more serious is that, of course you do a little bit of customisation work here in this instance and a little bit there. And before you know it, you've got 15 versions of your instance. And that's no problem on day one. But once you want to migrate everybody to something better, faster, newer, it becomes a huge issue.

Because if people have something and they're used to it, you can't take it away and say we're going back to a new version with limited functionality. At the moment we are repurposing it to a real, true multi-tenant situation. And our next customer will be already on that new infrastructure and yeah, we expect that by the end of the year, all the other customers are also on the new infrastructure. So we went from a, yeah, hybrid solution that gave us speed, agility but not really sustainable. It creates technical depth, if you will. And we're now trying to get that new true multi-tenancy going on.

[00:18:05] Barry O'Kane: That sounds really smart, a really intelligent approach. One of the things we've again talked about in a few episodes in this season is embracing the messy reality and focusing on that learning, as you said, on the agility. And so it sounds like what you were able to do as you were transitioning from your own product is really apply that learning. You were talking about the tweaks and things, and although that maybe created some technical debt that needed to be cleaned up, you were prioritising learning the functionality and the needs and how to solve the problems. And I think that from a technology point of view is so important.

Like it's so easy, as you said, to do that whiteboard, dream planning, disappear for two years and come back with a product that's late and over budget and so on. 

But at the same time, you have to live in this sort of messy middle that you're talking about where you've got, oh no, we have this thing and now we have this migration from one system to another. But despite that, I think that mindset is definitely how I view those sorts of problems.

[00:18:58] Frans Biegstraaten:. Yeah. Good to hear. And also of course we're trying to reuse a lot of the code that we have. But of course, five years ago we tried to solve things in a certain way and with new technology, with new capabilities, there's probably smarter ways to solve some of the issues that we encountered.

So we're also trying to use this period to get off any of those legacy, sort of stuff.  It works, but it's cumbersome or there's other reasons why it's not nice to work with. So it's also a good opportunity to get rid of all the legacy stuff that you're actually sorry for that it's in there and build it towards the next sort of standards. 

Also, we made, I'm not sure if it's a mistake, I see this at a lot of software companies, you have a bunch of programmers and there's three programmers in our case that we're working on our core system called it Bob and BIYU stands for Bob is your uncle.

[00:19:48] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, we should have said that at the start.

[00:19:50] Frans Biegstraaten: I should have said that at the start, indeed. 

And they were all super capable in JS. And then in a certain programming language. And our warehouse module was built by another group of programmers. And they were extremely well capable with another programming language. And, they talk to each other, no problem, but you want to unify that and bring that under one language. All that stuff we're fixing and it's nice, one of our key developers from back in the days is back with BIYU since recently and yeah, he knows why we made choices that we made and he knows the logic. He understands the logic and he also knows Okay these parts, we can do faster, better if we do it like this and this, and we're doing that which is super exciting. So yeah. 

[00:20:32] Jo Weston: And have you found it difficult to find good developers?

[00:20:36] Frans Biegstraaten: Now with the budget that I have, yes. 

[00:20:38] Jo Weston: I can imagine because I, yeah, I was involved in the launch of Seenons, the circular platform. Yeah. So back around the same time actually. And yeah, there was always the issue around finding good developers, and of course your technology is only as good as the people developing it in a way, so it's always quite important.

But how's your experience been and how have you dealt with and tackled that one?

[00:21:04] Frans Biegstraaten: Yeah, it's difficult to find really good programmers. It's not difficult to find a programmer but to find a really good person that can also do a fair bit of architecture and stuff like that and system design. That's probably difficult. Finding a programmer I think is relatively straightforward. And it's interesting because I just read an article this morning in the Foxconn, one of the major newspapers in the Netherlands showing that programmers, people with computer science and IT education in the US are now the sixth or seventh place in people who find it hardest to find a new job because of AI taking over. I sent it to our developer this afternoon, what do you think about this? 

But yeah, so I think from what I see also in the market and also in discussions with venture capital firms that we talk to, AI is gonna change that for a fair bit, and it'll be much more focused on system design and architecture rather than actual programming. 

And at the moment, I think these terms are, it's the same, we all call them programmers or developers, but I think that will really disintegrate. And the programming, like the hands, the jobs will be taken over by AI. And then the platform thinking, the system design, the infrastructure, that will still, maybe I'm completely wrong, maybe people will send 10,000 of messages that I'm wrong, but that’s how I see it now.

[00:22:27] Barry O'Kane: There's definitely nuance in that, but I think I agree with the broad direction of what you're saying. It's not quite as black and white as that, but I think it's certainly the biggest change since smartphones or the internet or something in our industry. 

But just to segue slightly, let's go back to talking about the product itself and the BIYU product you have. So you described the two modules, what does that look like in terms of like for a rental business, their full tech stack, what else do they need? What parts of the jigsaw do they need to glue together?

[00:22:51] Frans Biegstraaten: All right, so on a very high level, there's a gazillion of other shops, but on a very high level, you need a shopfront, right? So let's say you Shopify, which most people do not all use, I hear a lot more about Shopware more and more, German, of course WooCommerce there but let’s say your shopfront. Then in your shopfront you, sort of put all your products that you have up for rent, right? And that needs to come from a PIM, from a Product Inventory Management system. Shopify has a PIM, but Shopify is not made for rental or for PasS. So it's linear, so what we do is we have our own PIM which is very similar to the Shopify PIM, but with a lot more information that is rental or PasS specific. And you can either get that information directly from us and display it into your shopfront or you sync whatever. So there is some integration there. 

Then of course let's say you're a consumer. You pick your product, you select the time, 12 months. Then you need to go in through, into a transaction kind of module, right? Can be Firmhouse, can be any other company that is handling the recurring payment. Because normally with PasS products, you pay on a monthly basis, and then after 12 months, in this case, in this example, you send it back. If it's a rental, short-term rental, let's say a day or three days or a week or a month, usually it's paid in advance and you can use anything like Adyen, Stripe, Mollie. 

But let's say it's a PasS product for 12 months. So you need to guide your customers through this checkout. And let's say you use Firmhouse for this. They do some checks and they make sure that your payment method is verified and that you actually have an active account or a credit card or whatever you choose. And then at that point in time you have an order with a product and you have a validated payment method. At that moment, that order has to be pushed into BIYU. Because our system knows, Hey, this is an order that goes to customer. We don't really need to know the customer name or anything, but we need to know the address. So we get customer information. We have a product or products that are part of the order, and the person in the warehouse needs to start picking. 

So he or she gets our application and sees on the day, on the morning, you log in the morning, you see these 25 shipments need to go out today. You push the top one and you can see the products and it guides you exactly to the product, to the location of where these products sit. So if you have to pack out a Maxi-Cosi for your Opel Astra, whatever. And you have a specific adapter for it, it guides you like, Okay, this is in rack one, shelf A or rack A, shelf one, whatever. So that's all happening in the view. So we pick it, we prepare it for shipment. We create a shipping label. So we connect to, in many of the cases to DHL, we provide them with the information about the packages or the package, weight, dimensions, and they ship back a shipping label, which we put on the box on the specific area for that. And then is ready for outbound. So DHL gets a message that between five and six they can pick it up from the warehouse.

That is all done in the BIYU environment because you set up your PIM, you set up your product definition, and you set up your instances with all the variants that you have. Color, size, new, pre-loved, et cetera. Then the customer uses it. Product comes back, we can do that for our customers, but most of the customers don't wanna move straight into the full suite. But stick to the PIM or the asset and the warehouse module. 

So at the moment what happens is customers going to their account and they come into the Firmhouse environment and they can print a return label and they bring it to a drop off point where it's being picked up depending on what the arrangements are. And, then the product comes back into the warehouse. And in the warehouse the person in the hub basically scans the QR code on the product. And from that moment on, the product is back in the hub. 

We shoot a message to Firmhouse to say, Hey, the product is back. You can stop the recurring payment if you have an order that contains three products, for example, and only one is sent back. You only stop the recurrent payment for that one product, but not for the other two. So that's all billed in and then it goes through the refurbishment steps. Now this is the situation where our customer runs their own warehouse and is doing that him or herself. There's also brands that we're talking to that say, Hey, I have this super profitable linear business up and running. I don't really want to move anything in my operation because this is 10 years of thinking and work, and I don't want to interfere with my profitable business.

But I do wanna see what circularity can mean for my business, for my brand reputation, and for profit, because let's be honest, it can also be a very profitable business. I want to do it outside of everything that I'm doing, and maybe in the future, I will put it in under the same roof. And for that we have started a cooperation with, for example, Wefurbish in the Netherlands. And they take over the entire warehousing, but also the refurbishment and the cleaning. So we can offer, let's say, a complete A to Z solution to a brand where everything you know happens, it's their customer, it happens on their website. Payment will go through Firmhouse and will be of course booked out to the customer. And then the whole warehouse process, the pick and pack happens in an outsourced warehouse where they also do the refurbishment and the cleaning and the repair, et cetera, et cetera, and they will keep the stock. So once an order comes in through the brand's website, it'll be shipped from that warehouse. So I think that's a super interesting solution because it basically, in Dutch, we say “onsourcen” you basically take care of the entire end-to-end workflow.

We call that the circular operating system. Not sure if that's already registered by somebody. That's what we're trying to do. That's our sort of bigger picture where we can offer that in a single sort of contract go.

[00:28:42] Barry O'Kane: Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense, because that's two different, sort of target customers. The circular first, we do it ourselves, we have our own warehouse we move things ourselves and the brand who's exploring or wanting to pilot or setting up as a separate thing. 

As you said, somebody in an earlier episode talked about warehousing and how often there's just a corner that's doing the returns and it's a mess and nobody likes it. And then the decision makers in that business are going: circular doesn't work, this is an annoying distraction. But that's because, as you said, they haven't got the decades of brilliant optimisation that linear warehouses do. 

[00:29:14] Frans Biegstraaten: And you have to also think, so this is an experience, I won't call out any client names, but this is something that we came across quite often, is that also in the old view, we work together with brands and we try to help them to get parallel to their business, circular business up running.

And they're all super excited until you tell them but okay, the product also needs to be cleaned and they're all looking at each other, but you are gonna do the cleaning. No, you do the cleaning That's not in my contract. And then they need to set up a cleaning station and it requires, maybe a better way to say it, renting out or PaaS products is very different from selling products. The only sort of commonality is that the product is the same, the rest is different. It always comes back. It needs cleaning if you don't clean it and if you don't maintain it, it goes to the next customer. And in mayhem, because that's when the customer calls -  margin gone. Product needs to be sent back on your cost. If that happens a lot, then people will say, it doesn't work. But you can make it work. 

And also we made this mistake, we thought, Oh, we can use the cardboard box that the product came in originally. And I remember us sending out a high pressure washer. We just put on the label on the cardboard box, and we send it to the customer. And we thought off we go, easy peasy. It comes back, completely wet, of course, because there's always residual water in the hoses. So the whole thing just falls apart on my feet, in front of the customer door. And he is Yeah, I didn't know there was so much water stuck in there. And then we started talking to this customer and he said, Yeah, I get this product, but you forgot to add a hose. And then I bought a hose at the DIY center, and then it didn't fit my tab because we have three different adapters. And he said I had no idea how to use it. So we were like, Oh man, it is so different. So we started working with standard sized plastic recycled boxes. We made our own instructions in English and Dutch, but primarily with pictures because that's fast and people wanted fast. We added a hose, we added adapters.

So you start to think about, so if people use it or if people rent it, they don't rent it to then go to the store and buy stuff. Now they rent it because they want to use it immediately. Completely different. Selling a high pressure washer in a DIY store is just like woof, woof, woof, out, out, out. Now it's your problem. But when you rent stuff or your PaaS, it's not their problem, it’s your problem.

[00:31:28] Barry O'Kane: Now it’s your problem, yeah and that's actually one of the exciting things I think about circularity and particularly when we're talking about the sort of service aspect of platform or Product-as-a-Service type thing, it aligns the incentives of the people producing or delivering the products with the needs of the user, I think. And so that's tough, as you said, as a thing to learn or a mindset because in order to turn that into a profitable business, which it needs to be, but I think that from a conceptual sort of system level point of view, I get really excited about that. That you're now really trying to care about that person's experience. Is it gonna be useful, practical, taking away some of their pain and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:32:06] Jo Weston: But what I think is really lovely about what you are doing is the way that, although it's a bit messy at the moment, but we talked about that, me and Barry in a lot of the podcasts, about how it's just not clean cut. But that it provides an opportunity to test the concept and for brands to dip their toes in the water in terms of offering rentals as part of their service.

And I think that's actually where it's at really, that people are cautious and it's gonna make financial sense and it's gonna work operationally. So to give them that opportunity to just bolt it on for now and see how that works for them is probably a really good way of pulling more brands on board.

And also legislation that's coming will help also stimulate that as well. It's also a question of timing, right? Sometimes the timing's right, and sometimes it's not. 

And going back to when you've started version one of the company during COVID, the timing was right for that, to test that. But maybe now the timing's right for more brands and companies to transition to having that as part of their business, which I think  it's great then that the technology already is existing and improving to be able to do that.

[00:33:23] Frans Biegstraaten: Well said. Couldn't agree more. The easiest thing for these brands is to make available their own products because that's the thing they don't like.

[00:33:31] Jo Weston: If you had to pick an iconic Dutch brand that you would love to use your technology, who would it be? It doesn't have to be Dutch, actually. It could be any brand, but I presume at the moment you are working mostly within the Dutch market, but the technology could be extended to any business across.

[00:33:50] Frans Biegstraaten: Funny enough, our first customers were all non-Dutch.

[00:33:53] Jo Weston: Ok, that's interesting.

[00:33:55] Frans Biegstraaten: Yeah. So it's really a European play. That's also because the market is still developing also in the Netherlands. So the Netherlands alone is not big enough. 

[00:34:03] Jo Weston: So where are they then? You said your first customers weren't Dutch. 

[00:34:07] Frans Biegstraaten: In the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands and quite a number of good opportunities in France, Belgium, but also in Germany. So it's basically across Europe. 

Of course, if you think of volume I would think Philips, I don't think the brand Philips is Philips Medical is still owned by Philips, and it's still Dutch, but I'm doubting whether Philips is still Dutch. I think it's actually bought by a Chinese firm. But anyway, so Philips would be super interesting for household appliances in the PaaS model. Maybe even shaving-as-a-service, fee shave.

I also know that LG is doubling up in their rental and subscription on their product. So that's TVs, DVDs, whatever. So there's lots of others. There's if you can, think like that, there is, like a gazillion opportunities. 

Kärcher is a partner that we've worked with in the past for many years. Would be a fantastic brand to actually really roll this out with steel for gardening. Yeah there's plenty of so if I could pick and choose, I can choose 10 and then the next two years we're busy. But it takes a lot of convincing and it takes a lot of guts from people on the other side. It's always easy to say, ah, they're all stupid. No, they have to put the budget in there. Somebody needs to go onto their website and do stuff. Sometimes that's not done in this country, but it's done in the country where the headquarters is, and they're like, We're not gonna change anything for you, why?! So there's a gazillion gates that you have to go through, and it takes effort and it takes also persistence. I think people are addicted to things that go fast and quick. And as soon as things take persistence in time, sometimes months, sometimes a year and people have targets, it's very easy to say, Okay next year we'll look at it again. And, off they go for their sales targets because they get paid partly because of their sales, right? It takes also people with guts and with a belief in that something needs to change in our consumer behavior to actually move the needle.

And in some companies you can find them. And in other companies I've haven’t been able to find them, but I'm sure they are there, but I just knocked on the wrong door.

We also need to find each other. That's another problem. How can you find those people in the companies that are actually looking for this? I mean, I'm sure they're there, but, tell me which door to knock and I'll start knocking.

[00:36:16] Barry O'Kane: That's a good segue for our next question. For those listening who want to find out more about what you do or get in touch, where should they go?

[00:36:23] Frans Biegstraaten: They should go to www.biyu.world or .nl or .de and you can read all the information about what we do. You can also fill in your details for a live demo and we'll schedule in a demo of the platform. Or we can just do a video call. That's also fine. 

[00:36:41] Barry O'Kane: Brilliant. Thank you. And as usual, we'll share the links that you've mentioned there in the Show Notes and on happyporchradio.com for those listening to check out. Thank you so much. I know we could have continued talking there for the same time again, so I really appreciate that.

I really appreciate your time and sharing all of that. It's fascinating to hear your story and looking forward to hearing and seeing future success with BIYU, Bob is your uncle!

[00:37:03] Frans Biegstraaten: Thank you, Barry. Thank you Jo.

And yeah, if people reach out to you to reach me, just feel free to share my contact details and I look forward to talk to them. Have a good day.

[00:37:12] Jo Weston: Thank you.

[00:37:15] Barry O'Kane: : Thanks for listening.

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[00:37:29] 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.