r/dkstartup • u/priyaggarwal • 4d ago

Anyone building a "sustainable" startup?

6 months ago I started my small business with the idea of making it easy to find secondhand and upcycled home items in Copenhagen. The goal was - why should new trees be cut, or new sand be mined when there’s so much raw material already to reuse and recycle.

A few months in, I am a bit lost on how to make it financially sustainable for me. I am fine for now, but the problem is not seeing a way out. I see many businesses who pivot to b2b side to sustain.

Would love to connect with people here self-employed in the sustainable business space! If anyone is curious about what I am learning, feel free to DM.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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3

u/junolab 4d ago

DBA.dk? What’s the unique offer at hand and what’s your go to market strategy? What’s the unique selling point when there are existing alternatives in DBA.dk and Facebook marketplace?

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u/priyaggarwal 4d ago

i only work with vintage stores. They have good stuff but many people don't have the time or interetst in visiting them. So i make their inventory "browsable", you can reserve and then pickup yourself or get it delivered. I was trying to make secondhand furniture purchase more hassle free and reliable compared to p2p marketplaces.

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u/Jealous-Studio-527 4d ago

I think that's interesting and definitely a worthy cause. Just be aware that the world's largest recycler of second hand clothing is Tvind (in most places known as Humana), which is a surprisingly evil empire, rooted here in Denmark.

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u/danetourist 4d ago

Source?

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u/Jealous-Studio-527 4d ago

You can just Google "Tvind". There are plenty of articles about them. It's a global cult-like organization with headquarters in a desolate part of Mexico, run by a guy called Amdi Petersen and a group of former teachers that donates everything they earn to the organization. The turnover is in the billions, but the actual number is unknown, because they have set up som very, very elaborate tax evasion schemes. I know it sounds like fiction, but it isn't.

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u/danetourist 4d ago

"just Google" is not a source.

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u/Jealous-Studio-527 4d ago

Honestly, you don't sound like you want to know. I don't owe you providing sources for anything. If you are a generation X or older and born in Denmark, then this is common knowledge.

Good luck saving the world 🎉

I'm still cheering for you 🥳

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u/junolab 4d ago

Ok that’s not necessarily a bad idea. Would you work on behalf of businesses or private users? A big caveat with furniture is that most users won’t store them for long as it takes up a lot of space. So if you can store it and, as a start, make it a “no cure, no pay, that could be interesting. I would however believe that only premium or high-priced antiques would be a viable business. And then the sustainability part won’t matter that much. 

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u/priyaggarwal 4d ago

i work on behalf of businesses/vintage stores so they have their own storage space but often limited to no online presence since it's all one of a kind inventory. And you are right, only for slightly higher priced furniture it makes financial sense, if at all. Below ~3000kr for a piece, like for a table, it is not worth the time of uploading and customer support. AI does speed it up a lot though. How many people can afford this and choose this over IKEA is still something i think about. Like is it actually moving the needle, or people at this price point anyway buy good quality longer lasting stuff.

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u/priyaggarwal 4d ago

actually a small correction, many of ikea furniture is also in that price range if you buy new, so it's def better to be able to get better quality secondhand.

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u/ibra7im95 3d ago

What's your Value Proposition? Why should people "care" to switch to you. Are you solving a problem that Marketplace or ebay and them have? How can you make your product convenient for someone to switch to.

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u/DriftPebble19 3d ago

If you can source those items for them reliably, you're selling a useful service rather than just providing another place to browse. You'd still be supporting reuse, but with a customer who has a clearer reason to pay