They were recently awarded the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and the next success story follows: the Vienna-based trading platform refurbed, which specializes in refurbished products, has a fresh 54 million euros (approx. 57 million dollars) on board in a new round of financing fetched. The round is led by Evli Growth Partners and C4 Ventures, which have invested in previous rounds. All Iron Venture and Speedinvest are also there. The last round of financing raised 45 million euros. Even if the scale-up is being traded as the next Austrian unicorn, it is not there yet, even if the valuation is said to have doubled compared to the last round.
“Broad acceptance of sustainability”
“This milestone is not just a success for refurbed. “It very clearly shows the broad acceptance of sustainability that is now making its way into consumer decisions,” says Upper Austrian Peter Windischhofer, who founded refurbed in 2017 together with Kilian Kaminski and Jürgen Riedl. “Our scalable business model allows us to grow profitably while making consumption more sustainable. This is the future of a sustainable economy.”
According to the company, it is already profitable in the core markets of Germany and Austria, and now it is also a matter of getting the other countries into the black. It was also recently announced that the Viennese company’s external sales are more than one billion euros. Since refurbed does not sell itself, but rather connects customers with those dealers who themselves trade in refurbished goods (e.g. iPhones), it is not easy to derive its own sales from this.
EY Entrepeneur of the Year: Awards for refurbed and full board
refurbed wants to become the “new normal”.
refurbed is banking on the trend among consumers that more and more people want more sustainable products. “Of course we notice from our customers that sustainability is becoming increasingly important. This is a very long-term trend: When we started, there were only ten to twenty percent of our customers who said they wanted to buy our products because of the sustainability aspect. Now we are at 40 to 50 percent,” said co-founder Windischhofer in a recent interview with Trending Topics.
“Our vision is that trust in refurbished products is a given for everyone. Refurbishment must become the ‘new normal’. Because we all have to rethink both production and consumption in order to reduce the negative impact on our environment,” adds co-founder Kilian Kaminski. refurbed is not alone on the market. There are rivals, for example, with Back Market from France, which has also raised a lot of money and even reached a valuation of 5.7 billion dollars in 2022. After the hype surrounding tech unicorns in 2021, the boom has subsided. It is becoming more difficult to achieve unicorn status due to declining valuations.