World's Biggest Garage Sale

World's Biggest Garage Sale (WBGS) commercialise the circular economy through the activation of ‘dormant goods for good’. Dormant goods are those goods in people’s homes that are "too good to donate" but have not been used for a while, sitting idle in danger of eventually going to landfill. To address this, WBGS host large-scale local re-commerce events providing a digital platform and toolkit enabling communities globally to reproduce these large-scale re-commerce events via a licensed business model. Hosting a WBGS in a local community is a unique way for communities to fundraise while bringing people together to engage in sustainable practices. To date, WBGS has donated over $314K to charities, diverted over 3.3-million kgs of potential waste from landfill and contributed over $1.7-million in social value to the global economy. Scaling WBGS globally has the potential to provide significant positive impact for people, planet and profit for purpose.

Globally there is significant waste of consumer products. In the USA “With just 5% of the world’s population, we’re consuming 30% of the world’s resources and creating 30% of the world’s waste.” [The Story of Stuff] In Australia 89% of homes have unused goods. [Gumtree]

WBGS focuses on Dormant Goods in people’s houses - those items that are "too good to donate" sitting there not being used.

There is significant value in these dormant goods and a real danger that without better mechanisms to activate these dormant goods and change perceptions around second-hand goods, they will eventually end up in landfill.

Simultaneously, communities are looking for ways to generate much needed funds for their causes. Communities/charities are looking for alternative ways to generate funds without having to directly ask for money.

WBGS is a massive community event – a garage sale – where people donate their unused or unwanted household goods which are then sold to create purposeful profit. Our digital platform enables host communities globally to reproduce these large-scale re-commerce events via a licensed business model with donations from the profits of the sale of donated items going back into that host community.

WBGS serves:

- local level community members who benefit through finding quality products at affordable prices. The community members who hold the World's Biggest Garage Sale also benefit through connection and community.

- Donors who give their unwanted products rather can move them on sustainably, rather than dispose of products in unsustainable ways. 

- Local government/councils, who may sponsor events, benefit from waste diversion in their communities  

- businesses/partners - we help companies solve their waste to landfill solutions by being distributors of the their second-hand, sample and returned products

We also work cooperatively with our competitors (who we view as co-opetition working collaboratively and openly for the global circular economy), becoming a 'supplier' to charities, providing the opportunity for charities to 'harvest' the unsold items at World's Biggest Garage Sale events. 

A World's Biggest Garage Sale is a one day, large scale garage sale pop-up event, selling unused or unwanted household/office goods donated from the community. A preview night may also be built into the Event. Donations from the profits raised go to varying recipients based on a host community's choosing.

We come now with a B2B solution, providing a Guide, Platform and Partnerships to help other Host organisations facilitate a World’s Biggest Garage Sale Event in their local community (B2C).

People & community are at the core of WBGS. We work with a Host community and their team of Volunteers to help make the event a success. Our comprehensive guide will take the Host team through all the areas for a successful event.

Our platform makes it easy for Hosts to manage their event logistics and team. All the steps they need to take, marketing collateral, volunteer and donation management are part of the system to help them run their event. 

WBGS also provides many great partnerships that will make the event stronger and better. We build relationships with fellow businesses based on mutual benefit and collaboration.

The World’s Biggest Garage Sale brings 2 key concepts together and solves 2 problems at once. We are harnessing the circular economy by tapping into under-utilised resources (dormant goods) and preventing waste creation.  By seeing the value in these goods we are creating an alternative mechanism for generating much needed funds for our customers, outside traditional donation and fundraising models.

Our business model is unique as it is based in community participation and altruism around the circular economy where we are activating dormant and already existing goods in the economy to create profit for purpose and generate social impact value. Our innovation is unique, as it taps into the products that are sitting idle (dormant). Our competitors operate under a traditional ‘charity’ model, lacking innovation.  Our model is ‘profit for purpose’ built around recognising and mobilising the value of existing goods in the community - it’s seen community participation increase, with people seeking to ‘do more’ and ‘give more’.

Our business model is unique as it is based in community participation and altruism around the circular economy where we are activating dormant and already existing goods in the economy to create profit for purpose and generate social impact value. Our innovation is unique, as it taps into the products that are sitting idle (dormant). Our competitors operate under a traditional ‘charity’ model, lacking innovation.  Our model is ‘profit for purpose’, and it’s seen community participation increase, with schools and businesses seeking to ‘do more’ and ‘give more’. We are linking and leveraging the following technology to realise our innovative business model and process. 

Atlassian - Confluence and Jira

Zapier

HubSpot

SignUp Genius

Google Dashboards

Long-term we also plan to explore AI and blockchain for ways to track, measure and monitor waste coming into and going out at events.

ACTIVITIES

• Dormant Goods donated to events and sold, thus reused, upcycled, repurposed
• Councils sponsor a local WBGS in their community - provide $ toward the event.
• measuring our footprint and mapping goods donated and our supply chain
• greening our operations and ensuring minimal amounts of product go to landfill
• expanding the types of WBGS events across the community
• expanding scope of WBGS events to include repair, thus further increasing life of products
• Operating with strong governance with regard to the environment

OUTPUTS

• 1000 events x $100k = increase in value of $100M per year 
• Increased total lifetime value of otherwise dormant goods $100M
• Increased total lifetime value of damaged goods $100M
• good quality events globally that become a community focal point for sustainable consumption
• partner donation points, collections and activations
• landfill diversion measurement and conversion to CO2 gases reduced, water saved etc

MEDIUM-TERM OUTCOMES (1-5 YRS)

• Less excess stuff being produced - $100M
• Shifting attitudes towards second-hand goods - more attractive to consumers
• Shifting attitudes: consumers move product on more quickly 
• Consumers see 2nd products as viable purchase option
• Less waste to landfill

LONG-TERM IMPACT GOALS (5-10 YRS)

• less energy expended creating products
• less landfill sites so less environmental degradation
• reduced CO2 emissions and water used making products in the first place
• education and understanding re products amongst consumers
• Better designed products that last longer, therefore less waste
• New industries making better use of our resources; local employment
• Leading collaboration and growth of circular economy

Current

One event, one city, 20,000+ shoppers, 1 council region, 200+ volunteers, 400+ donors

One Year

20 events, 20 locations, 150,000+ shoppers, 10+ council region, 3000+ volunteers, 6000+ donors

5 years

400 events, 400 locations, 4million+ shoppers, 300+ council region, 80,000+ volunteers, 160,000+ donors

Next year

July 2019 we are opening a funding round for Seed funding and plan to expand to 20 events in QLD, Australia then nationally across Australia. This will allow us to grow our team, marketing and sales efforts and further develop our product.

Next 5 years

We plan to expand to other countries i.e. USA, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Europe to hold 400+ WBGS events via our licensed model. We will setup offices in these countries to support WBGS events.

Next Year

Our initial barrier is financial. Further funding will allow us to scale and execute on our goals via:

People - to expand the team and ensure sufficient capacity to support growth

Marketing - despite our significant reach with zero cost investment so far, we want to engage marketing and be proactive at a global level to establish WBGS as an authority on the circular economy and dormant goods, sharing the deep knowledge we've acquired through execution of events

Premises - secure a WBGS headquarters location as a central hub for all things circular economy

Technology - invest money in bring together the right tech to support transparent reporting and metrics and facilitate events, capture data, cashless transactions, consumer metrics, second-hand economy behaviours.

Next 5 years

Legal, cultural, or market barriers setting up in other countries.

We are opening a Seed investment round in July 2019 and working with key influencers such as Holly Ransom, CEO of Emergent and Fullbright Scholar and Leanne Kemp, CEO of Everledger and current Queensland Chief Entrepreneur. 

As an inaugural SheEO venture, WBGS has funding from SheEO that has enabled us to bring on more employees to assist with product development and scaling. We are also working with Vicki Saunders, CEO of SheEO,  entrepreneur and award-winning mentor. We will continue to work with the SheEO network to further expand internationally. 

Currently we are partnering with CISCO and Global Payments, who understand how to scale technology globally.

We are also putting an advisory board and formal board in place. We know what we don't know and we bring in people and organisations who are happy to share their knowledge and wisdom to help us grow.

2 x  full-time staff

2 x contractors

volunteers

Our team is comprised of a diverse and complementary group of experts in sales, business development, marketing, event management and software development.

Our founders Yasmin Grigaliunas and Leigh Grigaliunas both have extensive experience in sales, business development, management/leadership, project management, training & admin, HR, customer experience and intrepreneurship. Yas led a multi-million dollar sales department from the ground up, with award winning growth year-on-year for over a decade, transitioning successfully from B2B sales management to lead a project building the company online store, which today represents one of the largest contributors of revenue from a single B2C retail dept.

Donaugh Austin has over 15 years experience in engineering, IT, project management and business operations. She has led software development teams in ERP development and managed go-lives of new systems. She is well-positioned for product development and support for the platform to assist hosts in running their own WBGS events.

World's Biggest Garage Sale currently has three groups of partners for the following:

• Global Payments - data capture and technical efficiency of events

• CISCO - provision of technology hardware solutions for data capture and metrics analysis at events

• News Corp - advertising for our events

WBGS will employ a licensing model to train & support a WBGS local team & event. This will effectively commercialise our intellectual property - systems, processes & technology. Charities & community groups will pay a WBGS event licensing fee, thereby providing our main revenue stream. This will facilitate the activation & empowerment of 500 - 1,000 communities in 5 years across the globe, increase our impact and create a thriving organisation:

• Partner with local champions to set up WBGS events in communities across the globe.

• Activate & Empower each community using our proven approach - ie licensing of our IP, platform, system and partners.

• Facilitate through a cashless system - licensees utilise our infrastructure to process payments.

• Donate 50% of revenue to local charities; 30% revenue to WBGS; and 20% to local community (cost recovery).

• Divert Waste from Landfill & Give Back by tapping into the heart of communities, connecting people and activating dormant goods.

Initially we will raise capital investment via Seed round funding to establish our team, product and processes. This will see us through the initial 18 months and in that time we plan to hold events that will generate revenue via our licensed business model. We may then consider Series A funding, but will assess based on events held and revenue raised. Current financial modeling sees us being cash-flow positive in year 3.

We will also apply for national and international grants that relate to the circular economy and profit for purpose.

We would be particularly interested in the Solve network to help us better understand how we can measure and monitor the type and volume of goods that come through our events e.g. AI and blockchain may provide innovative solutions. This will help us measure impact within the circular economy and also allow us to communicate these waste metrics to manufacturers to influence better product design initially.

AI technology provide the opportunity to bring efficiency into the sorting and categorisation (pre-donation) of donations. AI technology could assist with measuring the amount of various categories of product that have been donated. It can also assist with decisions regarding the most sustainable pathways forward for these materials. It is estimated that a circular economy can unlock US$4.5 trillion worth of economic growth in the coming decade. But its success heavily depends on more transparency and communication in supply chains - so tracking the life of second-hand goods will be explored via blockchain. Integrating blockchain into our platform via a global partnership is currently being discussed with potential partners.

We are also interested in supply-chain relationships as our events become a feeder for charities and recycling organisations, so access to understanding or networks broadly to leverage these groups would be powerful to enable us to scale.

We would like to partner with a vehicle manufacturer and logistics companies to not only help with resource recovery and ciruclar economy logistics, but also our ability to add value to their brand through the hundreds of thousands of people we reach annually through our event based community model.

Waste partners which seems obvious for our organisation, however we are yet to reach out proactively ourselves, due to the fact that we would like to ensure that there is a strategic and longt-erm vision on the right waste partner that aligns with our vision, mission and culture.

TED globally would be a perfect partner/advisor for our business as our mode is very similar with regards to engaging and bringing together strong cimmunity leadesr to execute exceptional events globally.

We will utilize the prize to advance the scaling of our operations of resource recover and circular economy initiative in communities by delivering our platform solution to more locations globally. The funds from the prize on the circular econ solution will be used to not only create new jobs within our org. but also to leverage the storytelling for not only our organisation but also for General Motors and associated partners.

Partnerships are our strength, we value them as a key ingredient to the success of our business so far. With organisation such as CISCO and Global Payments, working with us in the early stages of our start-up we realise the need to develop additional key partnerships to ensure we can scale globally.