Many weeks of non-production in China due to strict Coronavirus lockdown measures, has caused a surge in companies across Europe demanding refurbished hardware to ensure their teams can continue working from home.

As a circular and eco-sustainable hardware distributor, we have experienced significantly increased demand for our products over the past eight weeks, as the supply of new products cannot keep up with demand.

We work closely with vendors such as HP, Dell, Apple and Lenovo to buy excess stock and refurbish slightly older laptops, servers and mobile devices to the highest possible standard.

Businesses are realising that the quality and function of a product is more important than being the latest, shiniest version. A laptop might be five years old, but it can still be used to do whatever is needed. Demand has accelerated like crazy over the last eight weeks as firms recognise the quality of products available in the circular market.

Large resellers across our key geographies are now coming to us, rather than us going to them, asking if we can supply 1,000 laptops here, or 1,000 there, because vendors were at the point of zero production in China and many companies had employees that worked off desktops in the office and no way of working remotely.

Our strategy means we are not overproducing products or using valuable resources, but instead doing our bit for the planet, while focusing on quality. Products come with a warranty which can range from one year to up to three years and they are awarded different classifications to make it easier for the partners to make a product selection. These classifications range from ‘minus 10’ and ‘minus 1’ generations, the latter being just one iteration below the most recent models launched to market and the minus 10 being older models.

Our loyalty to our resellers has been a key part of these developments.  We don’t work with end user businesses and will always refer them to one of our partners. We are always keen to hear from resellers that are interested in joining our specialist Circular Partner Programme.

It is a new concept for many businesses and for resellers we often have to work to convince them that circular IT will not eat into sales of new products, but instead will work alongside the traditional sales model. There seems to be an upswing in new sales from our partners as soon as they introduce the circular product line, because they are able to offer solutions on every price level without neglecting quality.