Godsinlösen sets its sights on Denmark

Godsinlösen is a company based in Skåne, in southern Sweden, and its business concept is to help companies to begin working with the circular economy. The objective is to contribute to a significant environmental saving while, at the same time, helping customers to reduce their costs. Insurance companies comprise the principal customer group.

Godsinlösen is one of the companies that have been awarded one of Region Skåne’s business development grants, which is an initiative intended to encourage investment in new markets. Godsinlösen’s co-founder and CEO, Christian Jansson, has been talking about the future and the company’s experiences of pursuing international expansion.

In practice, the company’s business concept may take the following form: instead of an insurance company’s customer disposing of their faulty mobile phone and being paid compensation in order to buy a new model, the customer now sends the device to Godsinlösen. It will then be either repaired or exchanged for an equivalent model in as-new condition.

In addition, the insurance company is provided with an environmental report, which details the environmental savings that have been made in the form of reduced carbon dioxide emissions and the reduction in waste. A reused mobile phone, for example, corresponds to a saving of 86 kg of waste.

What are the future plans for Godsinlösen?

“The business development grant gave us a boost. We are a growth company in the true sense of the word, with all that that entails, and this means that conducting our day-to-day business is a full-time occupation. In this kind of context, the business development grant is a measure that has forced us to devote more time internally to making our international expansion more concrete. The money itself is not crucial to our plans, but it has provided us with the opportunity to conduct feasibility studies, which will be a great advantage when the project is under way.”

“We applied for the grant in order to test our concept, and we saw the opportunity of being assessed by an independent panel as a great way of receiving constructive feedback. The fact that we had been assessed and deemed to be sufficiently innovative to be awarded a grant really served as a major source of encouragement for us to proceed.”

Which challenges do you anticipate in the future?

“Different challenges will always be arising as we move forwards. We must be able to deal with the growing pains, find the right people to work with, etc. The overall challenge will be to stick to our business plan and its central principles. Sources of distraction will always arise which, although they may be positive, provide the possibility of becoming side-tracked. We have now been able to test out the ground and have examined how, for example, insurance terms and conditions vary between different international markets. Germany, for instance, has proved to have a more restrictive market, which will necessitate a different approach on our part. In Denmark, on the other hand, we can benefit from the ownership structure within the insurance industry, which has Swedish connections. This provides us with a faster way of accessing the market, so this is where we will initially focus our attention. We have, therefore, chosen to begin our expansion in Denmark, and will be up and running there during the final quarter of 2016.”

What advice would you give to others who are considering applying?

“It is the preliminary work that lays the foundations for the continued work. In our case, we needed to conduct more research in order to be able to make the correct strategic decisions. The grant helped us to be able to devote more time to conducting the preliminary work more thoroughly.”

“It is important to realise that a precondition for successful expansion is that it has been well-thought through in advance. I can recommend using the grant to fund, for example, external consultants and additional groundwork, which otherwise might not be possible.”

Source: Skåne.se