Utilitarian turns the in-store collection programme retailers already run into the cheapest verified customer email a physical retailer can buy — and an audit-grade evidence layer the compliance auditor accepts. The marketing team and the ESG team end up arguing for the same poster.
The platform captures customer identity and product-level signal at the in-store take-back counter. The poster goes on the wall, the QR code goes on the poster, and twenty seconds later there's a record that didn't exist before.
A verified email at €1–3, attached to a brand, a category and a purchase-intent signal. High-intent in-store segment with a reason to come back — a discount they earned, not a promo they ignored.
Product-level take-back evidence structured for CSRD and EPR reporting. Auditable traceability from consumer interaction through to recycler manifest. The story the sustainability report tells, with data the auditor signs off on.
One programme. Two business cases. The marketing team and the ESG team end up arguing for the same poster.
Multi-format sporting goods retail. Take-back deployed in collaboration with EK Sport across selected stores.
Specialist running retail. Nine stores live across the Netherlands — anchor of the 2025 pilot, continuing through 2026.
Parent group, retail partner. Operates the Runnersworld and INTERSPORT formats inside the Dutch market.
Textile and footwear recycler. 100,000+ pairs processed with EK group since 2016 — now connected to a verified manifest layer.
The Loop circular concept store opened in Eindhoven in August 2025 with Runnersworld and is the public anchor of the deployment — a permanent retail space organised around the take-back, not around the wall it hides behind.
Read the case study →Utilitarian was founded to close the customer gap in the circular economy. A take-back programme that knows who returned what — not just how many kilograms.
Headquarters relocated to the Netherlands. Partnership with FastFeetGrinded confirmed. Platform live in INTERSPORT, Runnersworld and EK Sport stores. The Loop concept store opens in Eindhoven in August 2025.
Twelve-month commitment from EK Group across nine Dutch stores. Brand-led activations piloting at events. First conversations underway in Belgium, Germany and France.
Tim founded Utilitarian in 2022 in Sydney to address the gap between consumer-facing sustainability claims and what retailers can actually evidence. In 2025 he relocated operations to Rotterdam and led the Runnersworld pilot from day one — every poster, every flow, every weekly check-in.
He also serves as Technical Editor at TexSPACE Today, the textile-sector trade publication. The work overlaps: someone has to make the data layer real before the recycling-rate footnote in the annual report can stop being a guess.
We run a partner programme for marketing agencies, sustainability consultants and recyclers advising retail and brand clients. Partners bring the platform to their clients and earn margin share or referral fees on activated programmes.
See the partner programme →For deployments, partnerships, or platform questions — twenty minutes with the co-founder. No SDR queue.
