Driving Corporate Responsibility with Modern Recommerce Solutions

At Unilever, sustainability is a high priority and we support it.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably used a lot of Unilever products in your life. In fact, you probably have at least a few living in your bathroom, pantry, or refrigerator right now. Founded in 1929 through the merger of a British soap manufacturer and a Dutch margarine company, the London-based multinational has stayed true to its roots, producing primarily personal care products and packaged foods, and has grown into a $116 billion business as of 2024. . A company that sells its brands in almost every country on the planet.

With 2-3 billion people using these products every day, Unilever’s market penetration and profitability are beyond doubt. But this massive, consistent production can be a double-edged sword. Of course, there are social and environmental implications of running an operation of that scale. That’s why Unilever has committed to: One of the most ambitious corporate ERG initiatives The business world has never seen this before. Indeed, if there is any organization in a position to “make sustainable living the norm” (its self-described goal), it is Unilever.

While this is a massive effort that involves a broad, multi-pronged strategy that relies on numerous leaders, employees, partners, services and tools, this article will focus specifically on the issue of consumer waste and how Unilever is solving this problem through B-ACO. It will. We use stocks as our core partners.

Excess Inventory: A Common Problem

The pillars of Unilever Compass, as this sweeping plan is now called, include responding to climate change, protecting and regenerating nature, and building a world without waste. The third pillar presents two opportunities to reduce waste. The goal is (1) to prevent waste generation and (2) to ensure the outflow of all excess inventory.

Despite highly efficient production and best demand forecasts, Unilever recognized an unfortunate reality. This means that some of the products produced will always not be sold. After examining both the environmental and business impacts of unsold products, Unilever understood that new, effective channels for reselling this inventory were critical to its overall effort.

When legacy processes are lacking

Historically, when Unilver needed to dispose of surplus goods, it contacted several separate stock reduction channels – liquidators, wholesalers and brokers – that traded in unsold goods to initiate negotiations. While these services may have been effective enough in the past, modern, globally minded businesses must seek out more sophisticated alternatives, especially given some significant shortcomings of traditional approaches.

First, these old-school clearing partners may offer just pennies for unsold goods, with little room for negotiation. And once these surplus goods are sold to those buyers, they may change hands multiple times before reaching the consumer, with each new owner taking a cut of the item’s value – a value that should ideally have worked for the original brand or retailer.

It’s also difficult for brands and retailers to predict where their surplus will go when they sell products to these traditional partners. Therefore, if brand reputation is an issue, the company would be better off selling its surplus directly to verified and qualified business buyers. It is delivered directly to the end consumer.

Finally, and most importantly, there are issues of scale and efficiency. There is no shortage of liquidators and brokers waiting to process slow-moving inventory, but brands should be wary of engaging too many of them. It may sound counterintuitive, but the more reselling channels a business uses, the more time and resources it has to spend managing these relationships through different methods, including phone calls, emails, shared spreadsheets, and more. And keeping a small number of clearing partners is difficult. There are also disadvantages. Using fewer channels means a lighter upside in terms of labor time, but it also means your entire recommerce strategy hinges on just a few points of failure. If a trusted partner moves, closes, or is unable to purchase as expected for any reason, your brand or retailer may find their warehouses full and scrambling to deal with excess inventory.

Now that we have the business-centric issues clearly laid out, how exactly does sustainability affect us?

The pessimists of the world may view financial success and sustainability as conflicting, if not completely mutually exclusive. Although this is an unimaginative view (and, as we will soon see, an untrue one), members of this crowd can raise interesting questions, such as: If common, traditional recommerce methods are so inefficient, why bother? Without a scalable, easy-to-use way to clear unsold inventory, leaders will be reluctant to make real efforts to improve sustainability, choosing instead to landfill or incinerate slow-moving goods. But what if a proven solution exists that can help brands and retailers achieve their goals? both Setting goals may help cynics change their attitudes.

Fortunately, Unilever has found one such solution that solves all of the above problems and proves to be an excellent option for both business and sustainability.

Benefits of B-Stock for Business and Beyond

In late 2019, Unilever reached out to B-Stock Solutions, the world’s largest B2B recommerce marketplace for returned and excess merchandise. For nearly 20 years, B-Stock has connected the world’s leading brands and retailers directly to a global network of trusted business buyers who compete to purchase the high-quality unsold inventory they rely on to stock the shelves of their consumer goods companies. Unilever quickly understood the tremendous value of this approach and decided to collaborate with B-Stock. Instead of requesting and comparing many offers through multiple phone calls and emails, this online marketplace centralizes recommerce activities under a managed subscription model, and this makes a big difference.

One Unilever leader categorized the strengths of partnerships into five key areas:

• CoG (Cost of Goods) Recovery
  B-Stock’s listing and bidding sales model forces many potential buyers to compete against each other, naturally resulting in the highest willingness to pay. While tax breaks and donations have resulted in CoG recovery rates of 0-20%, Unilever has found that B-Stock is achieving CoG recovery rates of 55-200%. This is an undeniable improvement.
  
  
• Convenience and efficiency
  For every auction the company holds on the B-Stock platform, buyers or third-party couriers pick up the items from Unilever warehouses and bring them to their destination. This eliminated the need for Unilever to transport the excess goods itself. Skipping this step saves both time and valuable logistics resources that can be put toward moving newer, more profitable items.
  
  
• Reach and Demand
  Instead of relying on a small number of familiar clearing partners, B-Stock’s buyer network attracts hundreds of new, relevant, and qualified buyers that were previously unknown. B-Stock also expanded Unilever’s buyer base to include operations with limited or inconsistent purchasing power. In a traditional liquidation model, managing relationships with such buyers would not be worth Unilever’s time. However, on the B-Stock platform, it is just as easy to sell to thousands of buyers as it is to sell to one.
  
  
• Speed ​​at scale
  Running multi-user auctions on a single, centralized platform allows for faster and more efficient outflow of goods. With high buyer demand and support from B-Stock recommerce experts, the solution scales easily. Unilever sold more than 35,000 consumer products in eight separate auctions in one week, generating more than €8,000 in sales. However, B-Stock allows you to easily increase or decrease your resale cycle as needed.
  
  
• sustainability
  Selling excess inventory to corporate buyers helps these goods find new life in the hands of consumers rather than simply taking up warehouse space, piling up in landfills, leaching into waterways, or polluting the air with incinerator fumes. From an environmental standpoint, moving these items into your home is a very desirable outcome.

B-Stock Drives Positive Results

While Unilever publicly acknowledges that B-Stock was a natural fit for its problems and priorities, B-Stock still maintains highly detailed performance records to allow for ongoing analysis and data-driven program optimization over many years of partnership. Sometimes we want to let the numbers speak for themselves.

From the launch of the program from 2019 to 2024, B-Stock will transform Unilever’s business buyer base from a small number of liquidators. Approximately 1,000 unique bidders and 230+ unique buyers across Over 30 countries In Europe and North America. Besides, about 4 out of 5 auctions Loyal repeat customers win. But while these numbers bode well for the business, what’s really impressive is the impact this partnership is having on sustainability.

B-Stock has been Over 3,000 auctions held For Unilever, total Individual unit sales exceed 10 million units, many of them would have been unused and destined to be destroyed or buried in landfills. If these amounts are difficult to conceptualize, consider the total weight of the goods sold. 20 million pounds. For reference, this is roughly equivalent to the weight of the 984-foot wrought-iron Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Will surplus demand persist?

While Unilever’s results certainly make a strong case for a partnership with B-Stock, brands and retailers across our network are benefiting from record high demand for sustainable business practices and interest in the circular economy.

According to in-house research results, 75% of B-Stock buyers They believe that sustainability is very important or very important to them, which indicates that initiatives like Unilever are important to them. Furthermore, 65% of buyers surveyed Customers responded that sustainable shopping was very or very important to them. finally, More than 90% of B-Stock buyers We find it important to work with companies that value sustainability in their business practices.

Business buyers track countless metrics and run their stores around the clock, but it’s clear they have sustainability in mind.

Inventory sourcing and acquisition. And this number represents just one customer. For good measure, across the entire B-Stock market we have 144 million units sold About our existence – that’s Over £488 million Consumer goods have been given a second chance at life in the hands of consumers around the world.

The fact that forward-thinking companies like B-Stock enable sustainable practices without sacrificing positive business outcomes points to a bright future for both our network of buyers and sellers and the global circular economy.

A partnership that cannot be given up

As consumers and business leaders around the world wake up to reality, Our buying and selling habits really are problem, more companies will follow in Unilever’s footsteps and begin making big plans for a more sustainable future. Part of this evolution is the inevitable realization that profits and responsible practices are not mutually exclusive, as B-Stock demonstrates every day.

The global secondary market for consumer goods is vibrant and thriving. So why not make the most of it? Unmatched buyer demand, deep data insights and Suite of smart tools and services, we help your organization achieve new levels of operational efficiency while maximizing recovery of surplus goods, regardless of category, condition or quantity. And since you no longer have to choose between increasing your profits and preserving the planet for future generations, B-Stock is definitely one solution you can’t afford to sleep on.

Need more information? Visit our seller page Learn more about everything B-Stock can do for your business.

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