Lessons from HappyPorch Radio’s Rental Season (So Far)

Last week we took time to look back at the first half of HappyPorch Radios’s 9th season, focused on circular minded rental businesses, and the ecosystem of support and software to enable them, reflecting on what we learned.

While host Jo Weston noted that the Circularity Gap Report in early 2025 showed a decrease in circularity globally, Barry O’Kane observed that awareness, interest and engagement in it by businesses seems to be up in the interim this year. Perhaps in part due to the global turmoil of the US tariff turbulence, as discussed in a bonus episode with Charlotte Morely and Ryan Atkins earlier this year.

As they looked at each episode in turn, some recurring themes emerged:

Embracing messiness

Come again? You read that right. All three hosts keyed in on this essential ingredient to circular business success.

Host Tandi Tuakli articulated a perspective perhaps many of you have shared, at one point or another:

“I would say initially coming into this, I think my mindset was I was looking to find sort of commonalities, especially in terms of the technology. I was, I think subconsciously, looking for some sort of clear magic bullet where you can say, Oh, this is the solution. This is how all circular rental business models should be executed or this is the technology that can make it happen.

And I think to Jo's earlier point is that it's gonna be messy. And I think everyone mentioned that there is no one clear strategy, clear process especially when you're talking across different products and different kinds of customers and that you really need to embrace that in a way this kind of I want to say not unclear, but you might have a goal in place, but the way to get there is not necessarily straightforward. It's not a copy paste.”

Starting basically and thoughtfully when it comes to technology inclusion

The path to starting a circular minded rental business is, as the name suggests, not a straightforward one. But it can be started simply. In fact, that’s what we and several of our guests suggested.

While it in many ways may require some pioneering on your part to find the right mix of software, processes, products and how they are offered, many of our guests emphasised taking your time in getting clear which technology you need, rather than overbuying/investing from the start. Which leads into…

The value and power of partners, both for logistics and software

Circularity is not a solo sport. Given in many ways the processes and resources to launch and run a circular business are still in their nascent stages, seeking out those who can help you navigate the path between yourself and your customers, whether it’s seamlessly integrating software to finding the right provider to physically processing your goods, there is substantial value to be accrued from tapping those who’ve already navigated the path you seek to go, or have the knowledge and insight to create what your business specifically needs.

Focusing on creating simplicity for the customer and giving a superior experience.

Keying in on what your customers need and want, rather than what your values think they should have.

Let’s have a look at what we learned from each episode:

Danai Osmond: A full spectrum perspective

We started off the season with Danai Osmond of Refulfil, the perfect person to give a wide ranging and in depth look at the state of circular rental businesses. Barry O’Kane set the scene, giving a sense for the full spectrum experience and approach Danai brings to the equation:

“So Danai’s business Refulfil, they basically specialise in working with rental businesses. A lot of what they do is helping with the Shopify builds for a rental business to actually help with the customer interaction. But also Danai’s background is working in rental businesses, so in operations, so he has a very good and detailed understanding of operations in the warehouse: physically things moving around and how to handle returns and trying to get clear processes and structures around that. And then building the tools and the technology to enable it.”

Host Tandi put it succinctly when she said, “He really, I think, highlighted how important it is for the success of a rental business to be somewhere where there's an existing system that makes that possible, and how tech is then the enabler that connects that into this little circle to make it all possible.”

Leah Pollen: Electronics Resale Insights

In Leah Pollen’s episode, she gave us nuanced insight into the electronics resale market, especially smartphones. While a lot of ground was covered in that conversation, host Barry O’Kane keyed in on something pivotal, applicable far beyond this context:

“What really sticks in my mind is that circularity does not magically equal all these other benefits, sort of material reuse and waste and tackling our planned obsolescence and all of these problems that we hope that circularity can solve.”

And where is that exemplified?

“It doesn't automatically mean that because, for example, leasing phones is motivated or largely motivated by trying to encourage people to upgrade to the next device. But yet at the same time she was very much talking about how it is a step towards that big term vision and it ties back to other parts, other conversations we had where although circularity isn't automatically equaling those things, it significantly helps and it increases the chances of those things aligning and the incentives aligning towards more genuine circularity.”

This is an example of what Leah termed “accidental circularity.”

Dr. Lucy Wishart: The Broader Human Perspective

Taking a step outside the business perspective on the circular rental model, our episode with Dr. Lucy Wishart, a Scottish academic specialising in the circular economy, helped us see things in a broader, human scale vantage point.

The concept of consumer work, or how much effort someone needs to exert in the process of buying, having and letting go of a product stood out to our hosts. And that in some cases circular products and services can increase that load on consumers, discouraging uptake. Barry highlighted how Lucy saw addressing that, in the rental context:

“So if we can take some of that consumer work away - In rental, that means, for example, having the thing delivered on time in the right place in a friendly way that doesn't need to be assembled, and then helping me get rid of it afterwards so that there's this sort of seamless journey and the communication around that.”

Host Jo Weston highlighted the possibility of and benefits accrued by community activation around circularity:

“We talked about having physical hubs within locations, for example, in libraries or where there would be a place that you could go to, but also having robust technology that can support that.

But also potentially what you just mentioned, Barry, to have things delivered to people's homes for people that actually can't get to a specific physical location. But really getting a community rallied around the idea of rental to take it to the next level. And you often see that change happens with a small group of people.

So I do believe that that is possible, that grassroots change that then takes it to the next stage.”

Tandi highlighted another facet that stitches it all together, and in doing so, can powerfully activate circular rental’s possibility: bundling services.

“If you really want it to be more convenient and as she said, reduce that consumption work, you should think about not just one rental service, but all the things that person might need within that community.

So if they're putting together furniture, do they also need to rent tools? Do they need to rent a truck to pick it up? By bundling those services and making it even more convenient for people they're even more likely to then choose rental over purchasing.”

Ryan Atkins of Supercycle: Activating Circularity on Shopify

Ryan Atkins of Supercycle took us deep into what it could look like to activate circularity on Shopify, one of the top ecommerce platforms in the world. Supercycle enables businesses to simultaneously offer their customers a variety of options for the same product: rental, subscription, resale, purchase and more.

While his conversation explored the full spectrum of what’s needed to successfully do that, what stood out to us there?

Jo brought things to a big picture, human scale when she said, “I think if you can build on trusted technologies that people are familiar with, like Shopify, that really helps, because I always think that it's better to join up some of the off the shelf things rather than keep trying to reinvent the wheel.”

Barry noted how Supercycle can help unify and simplify what can normally be a complex web of technological, physical and logistical resources needed to include rental and subscription in the mix:

“Ryan articulates really well being able to say here's the piece of that difficult problem that his business can solve. And then what they're doing is partnering with others to say okay, we can integrate with this logistics provider, this 3PL or whichever one you're using, or we can work with this other platform to allow you to customise your warehousing or anything like that.

And to me, I think that is an example of the way that we can start to solve some of these really big complex system problems of having everything working together by starting to build the building blocks, but having them friendly and talk to each other and integrate with each other in a way that maybe allows more business to say, ‘Oh, there is an opportunity for me here.’ And a way to tackle those difficulties of making it easy to use for the person, the renter in this case.”

Further, he highlighted what should have rental businesses standing up and taking notice: The substantial savings using a platform such as Supercycle can mean, thus making the difference between a strong or struggling business:

“If your business is something like, I need to spend 30% of capital on the technology just to enable my business, and then 30% on the product and 30% on marketing and sales, and that leaves a tiny margin at the top then that's a really difficult business to run.

But if you can then say here's the existing tools and that reduces my 30% developing cost, my R&D costs are now down to 5 or 10% because their platforms already exist, now that business starts to look a little bit more viable. They can put a little bit more energy into the things that they're good at: their products and their positioning and their marketing and the relationships with their users and their customers.”

Yann Toutant of Blackwinch: The PaaS Perspective

Yann Toutant of Blackwinch brought a no nonsense, frank and helpful perspective on what it takes to succeed in the PaaS (Product-as-a-Service) space.

As Barry shared, the exploration of the PaaS space broadened our understanding of what’s possible:

“Although we're focusing on rental broadly in this season, it's not like it's one thing and one thing only. It's this complex ecosystem of all these different options and things we could do. And rental is some of those. But then also Product-as-a-Service in my mind, it feels like a natural extension of the rental thing. Saying “Here's a product when you need it, but Okay, here's the product and a service, or here's just the output of that product, so you don't need the product and you're paying for just the output.”

It's an incredibly powerful alignment of incentives, which I get really excited about, and I think Yann did a really good job of presenting and explaining that in a very concrete, realistic way.”

He later touched on an aspect Yann shared that is absolutely essential to a PaaS offering’s success: And circular offerings in general:

“When you're trying to introduce an as-a-service offering or model to an existing business, how crucial it was that everybody's engaged in that, and it's not just a little add-on or a plug at the side. And that won't really work because it's such a subtle but powerful mindset shift from, Okay, we're trying to sell these things to Okay, we're trying to get a recurring income from this service. And that affects all aspects of the business. I thought he articulated that really well.”

Beyond that, a theme that was echoed across multiple conversations this season was highlighted: the value of taking a patient approach to technology inclusion, not overinvesting before you’re really learned what is important.

Katie Hanton-Parr of Baboodle: Starting Smart

This theme was discussed in detail when our hosts talked about the episode with Katie Hanton-Parr of Baboodle, a leader in the high end baby equipment rental industry that started from humble, but very smart beginnings.

Tandi found Katie’s approach to starting her business instructive to others: “Before they even started investing in their technology for their business, they were just using an Excel spreadsheet to document the steps and what needed to be done with what products, where they were, the locations and so forth. So I thought that was really smart, really great for other entrepreneurs that might be looking to enter the space to see that you don't need to invest a lot of money and infrastructure to get started. And just prove your concept.”

The conversation had Jo sharing a reality check for would-be circular entrepreneurs: “If you think you're gonna have a fully polished circular model that works from day one, think again. You have to have that kind of long-term vision that Yann talks about in order to go on that messy journey. Just make the improvements along the way. But knowing that, it's not gonna be in any way, shape or form perfect.”

Patrick Hypscher: Service First and Foremost

We returned to the Product-as-a-Service sector with Patrick Hypscher, and while a nuanced, technology wise approach was encouraged, a point echoed by others this season, and heartily endorsed by us, something entirely more fundamental stood out to our hosts: it’s about service, first and foremost.

As we said in an earlier article,

“After interviewing people at 16 different PaaS companies on his podcast, Patrick found a clear pattern: ‘It’s the service aspect that stands out. It's in your face, it's in the name, it's product-as-a-service. And the stronger the service aspect, the more likely you'll be successful with your product-as-a-service proposition.’ In other words, the ‘service’ in Product-as-a-Service isn't just marketing language. It's the entire point. While this should seem self-evident, it’s something that those in the company beyond those leading the charge into this sector need to be bought in around, and actively supporting.”

As Tandi put it, “Whatever the product is that you're renting, however it is that you want to execute this, you need to, at all times, be thinking about what it is like for the customer. Designing it around their needs, their wants and above all, making sure that you put the customer first.”

Jo took that further, with a point we could all stand to bear in mind:

“I think it's one of the pitfalls of circular businesses or circular missions, should we say, can be very much focused on what you think is right and what you think is the way forward as a business, without considering what the customer wants, and how to take the customer along with you on the journey. Looking at things from outside in instead of just from inside out, your perspective is a crucial thing that sometimes can become too idealistic without really bearing in mind what the customer needs are.”

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This article only scratches the surface of all that was gleaned during our look back episode. Take it all in, including all the associated resources, here. The entirety of season 9, Exploring Circular Tech: Rental can be found here.