Tennant: Creating circularity through customer-focused RECON program

Challenge

Tennant’s innovative RECON program found value it wasn’t previously capturing by creating a new business model and reshaping the company-customer relationship. Through the RECON program, Tennant reconditions its previously owned cleaning equipment and resells the products at a discounted price.

This innovative approach lengthens the lifespan of their machines, helping conserve materials and reduce waste to landfills as old machines are reused and repaired. Customers purchasing Tennant RECON products would have likely purchased a new or used product from another company at their price point. Reconditioning uses less energy and fewer components, thereby reducing cost and greenhouse gases, compared to manufacturing new products. By offering a refurbished product, Tennant is reducing their overall resource footprint.

Result

• Identify gaps in product life cycle.
• Identify ways where life cycles can be extended to minimize waste.
• Expand customer base through a program with used and discounted products without significantly impacting new product sales.

Through introducing the RECON program, Tennant embedded circularity principles and demonstrated how to create a new business model to advance systemic change in their processes and products.

Tennant Company demonstrates how to create a new business model to advance circularity through their customer-focused RECON program. By selling refurbished products as a separate product line, they have reduced waste, cultivated a new customer base, and reshaped the supply of floor cleaning equipment in an affordable, sustainable manner.

Tennant has found that the RECON program has not diminished sales of its new products. Customers of the RECON program are primarily first-time Tennant buyers. Furthermore, the company’s RECON customer base and sales are notably resilient through economic recessions.