LimeLoop

While an ever growing percentage of our shopping is done online, our current methods for sending and receiving goods are designed for an in-store retail experience. As a result, we're seeing a system that is heavily reliant on resource heavy, single use plastic and cardboard shippers. Using recycled billboard ad vinyl, we've created, lightweight, durable, and returnable shippers that e-commerce businesses can use to ship goods to their consumers, instead of single use cardboard boxes and polybags. To complement the shipper experience, we’ve developed an app the brand, fulfillment centers and end customers can use to further engage with the shippers. They use the app to track and purchase shippers, calculate environmental impact, and connect with one another. If scaled globally, it would reduce reliance on single use materials, deforestation and dependence on non-renewable resources, and further create less waste that pollutes oceans and landfills. 

Global Packaging is a $900B market that’s expected to grow to $1T by 2020. 65 billion parcel packages are shipped every year, this means that with just 1.5% of the market, LimeLoop shippers will carry 1 billion of the world’s packages. For every 10,000 shipments, we’ll save about 70 trees, 90k gallons of waters, and 200 gallons of oil, compared to conventional packaging. This also means replacing 10,000 plastic shipping bags that would otherwise end up in landfills or the ocean. Our shippers also save 80% on emissions during the process of returning the shippers to fulfillment center rather than overseas recycling processes. 

Our current and pipeline retail customers are all in search of a more sustainable way of shipping their goods to their end consumers. So with each customer that we work with to replace their single use packaging, we grow our environmental impact.The goal is that any retail company that ships to consumers (and eventually B2B as well) will be able to leverage one of our shippers and technology to do so in a more sustainable way. 

At LimeLoop, we’ve created a returnable alternative to single use packaging. Historically, recycling has been the assumed solution to this growing problem. Prior to the explosion of e-commerce, this may have been a viable one. However, now with boxes so regularly used to ship individual items to consumers, overseas importers refusing to handle our waste, we’ve learned that this process is a very resource heavy one and not sustainable enough to keep up with the growing demand. The environmental impact of our shippers is far reaching, for every 10,000 shipments, we’ll save about 70 trees, 90k gallons of waters, and 200 gallons of oil, compared to conventional packaging. What’s more is the process of returning the shippers to fulfillment center saves 80% on emissions compared to overseas recycle processing. We have developed an app to help our customers manage their fleets of shippers, and are working to incorporate individual sensors into the shippers to provide even more detailed data.

LimeLoop has the privilege and challenge of being first to market in this space. One EU competitor, RePack, has not broken into the American market, and one US based company, Returnity, specializes in custom reusables as compared to our standardized approach. Neither leverage technology to incorporate the data and experience value add. We are also in the process of patenting the sensor incorporation to further distinguish ourselves.

The patents pending by Returnity are design patents, these are very difficult to defend as slight changes to the design will null the infringement. Instead, we’ve decided to focus on creating unique utility IP around the applied use of the sensors and our proprietary software. We are pairing that with partnerships with carriers, distribution centers, and municipalities; as well as strong branding to further solidify ourselves as the go-to for reusable packaging and logistics solved or platform.

Through research and lessons learned from our pilot year, we’ve seen that there are a number of places along both the supply chain and reverse logistics processes that are ripe for streamlining and improving.

While companies are focusing on addressing individual ineffeciencies in this process (i.e. Happy Returns for reverse logistics and Narvar for post-purchase experience), we see an opportunity for one company to sit on top of these individual components, complementing the data they’re gathering, and serving as a Salesforce of logistics. Given our shipper’s access to each part of the outbound and reverse logistics and our leveraging of technology, we are poised to be that company.

Today, LimeLoops core technology is the combination of our shipper, software, and an in-development sensor. They are leveraged in order to improve the experience for our brands, fulfillment centers and end consumers; streamline and shorten the process of sending and receiving the shippers; and gain new insight into the shippers journey and interactions.

Single use materials and waste associated with our current e-commerce system it puts pressure on our natural resources, and the issue continues to grow with the growth of online purchasing. LimeLoop shippers replace the single use materials with a returnable, reusable shipper that addresses the issue from the start. Over the lifetime of every shipper in circulation, 2000 cardboard boxes or plastic packages are saved and those materials diverted from the waste stream, creating a more sustainable future for many generations to come. 

Currently, the number of people (brand customers) we are serving is $4k/month. In one year, we will be serving $150K in brand customers. The number of brand customers we will be serving in five years is $10M. 

We will transform how goods are sent and received. With our shippers, over the next year we will save 1K trees, 1.3M gal of water, over 3K gal of oil and 80% on emissions. In the next five years we will do even more, with savings of over 66K trees, 90M gal of water, over 200K gal of oil, and 90% on emissions.

Ecommerce is growing 250% YOY. This has presented both challenges and opportunities. Currently the challenges are two-fold; one consumer behavior change and two workflow technology for returns within 3pl’s. Both are solvable but will take some time to achieve. 

The Consumer behavior change of returning packaging vs recycling it or sending it to the landfill will take time. However, early data shows without incentives or decentives consumers are willing to return the shipper when educated and the act is convenient; on average 90% of consumers return the shippers. The second challenge is 3PL workflow shift. Currently the majority of 3PL’s WMS systems were designed for a retail economy. The rapid shift to an e-commerce economy has shifted tech feature needs to provide sufficient data and the increase of returns has created in increased intake. Both are solvable with increased data and technology plug ins. We look forward to solving both of these solutions with the launch of our sensors which will provide real time tracking, transparency and smart home connectivity. 

We have three full time team members, our CEO and Co-Founder Ashley Etling, CTO and Co-Founder Chantal Emmanuel, and CCO and Co-Founder Viola Sutanto, and one part-time employee on the marketing and sales side. We have an outsourced software and hardware team of ten. 

Ashley is inspired by collaboration and discovery, and driven by the confluence of design thinking, business, and technology. This continued curiosity has led to founding and building multiple companies from the ground up. Ashley’s perseverance has yielded high impact results from recruiting and retaining a team of 500 award-winning designers, raising millions of dollars in high growth capital, 10X year over year revenue growth, and closing 10+ Fortune 500 partnerships. When not contemplating a new idea, you can catch her testing recipes that pair well with wine, traveling, playing outside and  working with other ambitious founders. 

Viola brings a visionary perspective to the future of products as both a successful creative and entrepreneur. She has successfully developed and launched numerous products and companies from idea to store. Her work has been featured on the Today Show, Real Simple, O magazine, Design Sponge, OhJoy and numerous blogs and publications. 

Chantal believes that leveraging the right technology at the right time has the power to solve problems in magical ways. As a Software Engineer she has been able to bring these solutions to life, building tools and experiences using modern frameworks. Previously as Lead Engineer at Red Clay she created a community and project management platform that engaged industrial designers and brands to develop ready for manufacture designs.  Most recently, she’s worked for one of the leading consulting firms, SYPartners.

We currently partner with 13 medium size apparel brands who are using LimeLoop shippers, and are in conversation with many more. 

We are also partnering with Sony on GPS technology, Levis on new material development, Pitney Bowes on logistics and University of California Berkeley on a Capstone Project.

Our business model is a monthly subscription. It includes the rental of the shippers, logistic onboarding, 10% shipper loss and the platform. The pricing is based on their current shipping costs, the added value of the software and data, and the break even for the cost of goods. If 0.3% of the annual package sent are replaced with 200 million LimeLoop shippers, at $2 average rental cost, that will generate $3 billion in recurring revenue. 

Collaboration is key to solving the challenges at hand. Specifically consumers behavior change and supply chain workflow innovation. The multidisciplinary network Solve offers will support us in addressing the challenges mentioned through advisors and industry connections, and the partnership potential with fellow entrepreneurs, advisors and investors will exceed our scale goals.  

We have four key stakeholders; ecommerce brands, carriers, 3pl’s and the end consumer. Leveraging partnerships with these stakeholders will exceed our scale goals and make a greater environmental impact. For example . . .

1. Ecommerce Brands. Our current focus is partnering with medium size apparel to decrease their shipping waste and increase customer retention. We look forward to expanding into new categories such as body care, food, pharmaceuticals, etc. 

2. Carriers. Establishing partnerships with carriers such as DHL, USPS, UPS or out of the box pick up partnerships such as Lyft will decrease the return cost of the shippers and optimize the return. 

3. 3PLS. Our goal is to have a partnership with every 3pl in the US and eventually abroad. Continuing to expand this network with decrease all friction with reusable integrations and in return make it simple for any brand to leverage LimeLoop. 

4. End Consumer. Partnerships with city governments, brands, media, etc will be critical to making the consumer transition from recycling to reusables simple. 

At LimeLoop, we are reinventing the way goods are sent and received. In place of single use cardboard and plastic, we’ve created a shipper with a lifetime of 2000 shipments, far surpassing the use of a conventional shipping package and leaving lasting positive impacts on the environment. Through our shippers, and the added value from the smart sensors soon to be incorporated into them, we are providing a new model for ecommerce shipping the reduces and eventually replaces the need for disposable packaging.