How to adopt a circular business model

At Diab, we want to promote the transition from linear business to circular business. This is a significant change and may be the most fundamental in our lifetime. It's about transforming the business model from linear to circular profits. Because it all comes down to how we make money and generate sales. If we cannot transform, it will be tough for us in the future. But it's also an inspiring and exciting change, full of possibilities.

It's about business development.

So, what needs to be done? First of all, you have to make up your mind. Do you want to be part of the solution? Or do you want to keep the status quo and be part of the problem? If you decide to be part of the solution, you get creative. And when you look into it, it's similar to what you already do. Because this is about innovation, business development, and things companies face daily. But you have some new criteria that you need to consider. The most important one is that you need to stop wasting resources.

Responsible sourcing

We need to conserve the resources that we have. At Diab, we’ve made up our minds. We want to be part of the solution. We try hard to change things in different parts of our value chain. And I'll give you a few examples. We call our sourcing for responsible sourcing, meaning we engage our suppliers to be a part of the change. We might impose new requirements on them. We might say we want to buy recycled raw materials from you. Or we want to purchase mass-balanced raw materials from you because that is what we need for our products. These are examples of what we can do. It stimulates a circular business in that part of the value chain.

Reusable or recyclable

When considering our products, we want to maximise their circularity while minimising their carbon footprint. We aim to design products that can be easily repurposed for a second life or efficiently reused at the end of their lifecycle. For instance, we prioritise using locally sourced raw materials to promote product circularity and minimise carbon emissions. Additionally, within our sales and technical support portal, we employ a strategy we refer to as "circular sales." This approach ensures that our sales team is well-equipped to provide optimal support for our circular products to our customers.

Small systematic steps

That means our sales team needs to understand what we have done in the sourcing. Or what we have done in the product development. That way, they can explain all the benefits our customers can get when buying products from Diab. Working with, or transforming into, the circular business model is about changing all the parts of a company's value chain. But it does not happen overnight. It happens in small steps. Small, systematic steps. We have decided to make this change because we want to be part of the solution.