Tagline
Circular economy software integrating resource sharing, asset management, disposition & sustainability metrics on a user-friendly platform.
Pitch us on your solution
Rheaply is redefining how asset management looks to an organization. Through collaborative research, Rheaply has discovered that the value of assets locked away in storage, idling underutilized or bound for landfill, remains unquantifiable but staggeringly large. We believe the solution lies in a more transparent asset management system that maximizes reuse and remanufacturing of resources across operations.
Rheaply’s Asset Exchange Manager is driving visibility and utilization of surplus assets and resources on a modernized platform. Current asset management software is built to track inventory and asset depreciation over time. While important, this doesn’t help organizations understand utilization rates or where assets exist within the value chain.
By scaling globally, Rheaply will be able to support reuse and remanufacturing as a pillar of any zero waste strategy, increase the efficiency of operational budgets of any organization, and connect communities to the world of underutilized, shareable or unwanted assets.
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What is the problem you are solving?
Universities, private enterprises or governments don’t fully utilize existing assets and generate millions of tons of institutional waste annually. These organizations spend additional capital by double purchasing equipment, unnecessarily storing extra workplace inventory, or worse, paying to purge assets that still have value. This is a private systemic issue that has remained pervasive throughout every supply room, surplus store or excess warehouse.
This problem affects communities around the world that either is wasting valuable resources, missing out on valuable assets going to landfill or dealing with the adverse effects of improper disposal and increased landfill emissions. This problem is encouraged through instant purchase gratification, an overwhelming amount of assets and a lack of any financially viable, scalable sharing/reuse alternatives.
We are in an age where every large organization in the world has developed an environmental or corporate sustainability strategy but still grapples with outdated, surplus and idle assets. Out of the environmental trifecta, “Reduce, Reuse & Recycle,” Rheaply is empowering these institutions to not just reduce consumption and reuse existing value but also exercise their fiduciary duty to save money through purchasing efficiencies, collaborative asset sharing, and secondary markets.
Who are you serving?
Rheaply serves two types of clients critical to the successful supply and demand of any circular economy. Large organizations use Rheaply’s platform to ensure full utilization of existing assets by empowering departmental transparency and facilitating peer-to-peer asset exchange.
Second, smaller organizational partners also play a pivotal role in the development of our platform. As we continued to scale our solution, we have expanded our roster of nonprofits, charities or K-12 public schools who are able to directly benefit from assets that our larger partners are enthusiastically willing to share or donate. This effort can greatly increase the operational budgets of impactful institutions and connect local communities through knowledge and equipment sharing.
What is your solution?
Rheaply’s Asset Exchange Manager is a cloud-based platform that elegantly combines a modern asset management system with an online marketplace, allowing an organization to source available resources before double purchasing. Rheaply offers a variety of services that include but are not limited to asset management, internal asset sharing or external asset exchange.
Organizations may onboard their assets by uploading pre-existing data sheets to automatically populate their new internal platform or begin populating the interface through organic admin/user-generated activity. In order to scale our solution throughout our partner organizations, Rheaply incentivizes user growth and activity by offering a gamified experience. Users are rewarded through monthly giveaways for posting items ready for purchasing, sharing or donating internally or throughout the Rheaply network. Our software product is unique in its ability to prompt users about items that may be of interest according to their institutional role as well as connect users who may be able to fulfill an internal supply to demand.
To further harness value, Rheaply generates reports associated with the number of transactions, total value recaptured and waste diverted from landfill in order to further empower organizations to take part in the financial, social and environmental benefits available in an expanding sharing and circular economy.
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Where is your solution team headquartered?
Chicago, IL, USAOur solution's stage of development:
GrowthSelect one of the below:
New business model or processDescribe what makes your solution innovative.
Rheaply's Asset Exchange Manager is the first software to combine a circular economic platform, asset management business model and sustainable disposition processes that empower our network of organizations to make prudent, more efficient purchasing decisions based on utilization, reuse, and sharing of valuable assets.
To hurdle the barriers of challenging the consumption status quo, we are consciously scaling our circular network by targeting institutions who prioritize corporate sustainable goals, connecting employee communities and of course, saving money.
Rheaply's revenue comes from monthly subscriptions and transaction fees. In turn, our partners save money and retain value by not double purchasing items, gaining revenue from rented items, selling or donating items of value and not paying for additional disposal through waste management companies and landfill fees.
Describe the core technology that your solution utilizes.
Rheaply is a progressive web application built through Javascript. Rheaply's Asset Exchange Manager (AxM) is highly configurable to an organization's needs and our small team of software developers is able to make quick changes to the user experience, backend programming, elastic search, payment processing, in-app messaging, external notifications, and social features.
Our business model relies on our software as a tool to connect our network of Fortune 500 companies, universities, non-profits and school systems. While reuse networks and circular economic efforts have previously struggled to scale, Rheaply allows institutions to collaborate internally and connect externally to share resources with partners across industries for maximum impact and program longevity.
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Why do you expect your solution to address the problem?
In a recent article published in Nature, recycling leftover chemicals and reusing equipment slashed energy bills and boosted research budgets at two cited institutions, Harvard University and the University of Michigan. The U of M reported an annual savings of $250,000 by reclaiming more than one-third of all unexpired and unused lab resources.
Unfortunately, Rheaply has discovered that successful initiatives like these do not last and are difficult to scale as they are often tied to a key stakeholder or a manual process of surplus exchange events. Once organizers leave or the process breaks down, unused materials continue to pile up and become waste. Even in successful initiatives, assets continue to idle in storerooms, few people know about locations and resources are forced into a reality of a throwaway decision due to convenience.
To put it simply, Rheaply delivers the right items to the right people at the right time. Upon login, users select preferences allowing us to connect material flows, in-app and email notifications allow users to be alerted to resources in real time, gamification rewards users for continued platform activity and real monetary savings encourage administrators to list items on Rheaply. Throughout, Rheaply tracks the data for demonstrable and transparent transactions, savings and waste diversion metrics.
Select the key characteristics of the population your solution serves.
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
How many people are you currently serving with your solution? How many will you be serving in one year? How about in five years?
Rheaply's current business model is focused on scaling our circular economy solution through our institutional partners and we are currently serving 1,500 users.
Due to growth with existing partners and late-stage pending agreements with large government departments and private/public enterprises, Rheaply is expected to be serving 30,000 people by the end of the year.
As we continue to scale by onboarding large businesses and connecting local & regional networks we expect to serve 1,000,000 users around the world in the next four years.
What are your goals within the next year and within the next five years?
Within the next year, Rheaply is going to expand to large organizations within the United States and internationally. This will bring exciting opportunities in reuse, remanufacturing and circular economic design.
Rheaply changes the way a circular, sharing economy can flourish through building a perennial digital infrastructure able to be scaled across an entire organization and network of institutions.
In the next five years, Rheaply is going to be the center of technological development within the circular economy. At organizations large and small, users will be able to responsibly and efficiently source materials and resources for all of procurement needs.
What are the barriers that currently exist for you to accomplish your goals for the next year and for the next five years?
A digital sustainability solution geared toward solving procurement and disposition issues is a new type of sales offering. When it comes to Rheaply's sales cycle this means a significant amount of time locating not just the right sustainability stakeholder but also the correct operational decision maker to purchase Rheaply software.
Our sales team has to walk a fine line of bringing the correct amount of stakeholders to agree to a purchase but not inhibit the sale. When done correctly is a holistic solution with significant "buy-in" delivering widespread benefit across an organization.
As we continue to scale, use funding and increase our client base, developers and designers will be in high demand to service additional digital products we offer. As we connect operations, solving operational workflows means infiltrating hierarchies and connecting the right stakeholders across industries, communities or even competitors. This will continue to prove to be a slow process as day to day priorities for administrators often take priority.
How are you planning to overcome these barriers?
The greatest asset in our sales cycle is our product. While the sales cycle may be slow, our product continues to be updated and exceeds expectations. This makes Rheaply incredibly sticky for our user base, department administrations, and organizational workflow.
Rheaply's business model is conducive to selling and on-boarding an entire organization. Unlike traditional SaaS business models where organizations are charged per user, Rheaply's services are packaged at a price that one department may purchase but every department and employee can benefit from.
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For-ProfitIf you selected Other, please explain here.
We are not a subsidiary of any larger organization.
How many people work on your solution team?
The Rheaply team has a full time staff of 8 experts in their respective fields.
For how many years have you been working on your solution?
2 Years
Why are you and your team best-placed to deliver this solution?
The idea of a circular economy was created through academic and industry-backed research but has been previously limited in scale due to barriers of collaboration, financial viability, and social priority. In recent years, the necessity for Rheaply's solution and the call for growth has increased.
Dr. Garry Cooper, CEO, has built Rheaply's platform with a team of experts, including a PhD, JD, and MSUS, who specializes in corporate strategy, research, software development, marketing, law, sales, and circular economies.
With what organizations are you currently partnering, if any? How are you working with them?
Rheaply's Asset Exchange Manager currently services a range of universities and private enterprises including programs running at Northwestern, UIC, Stanford, Google, Mars Wrigley, Abbvie and soon, MIT.
What is your business model?
Rheaply follows a service as a software business model charging an implementation fee, monthly subscription and transaction fees.
We allow organizations to immediately manage and redeploy value across an employee base, departmental silos or connected networks.
Rheaply allows an organization to immediately achieve sustainability goals, create a financially viable reuse community and impact local communities.
What is your path to financial sustainability?
Rheaply is a for-profit company and will continue to drive growth through sales and investment capital. By closing late stage deals, Rheaply looks to be profitable by the end of 2019.
Why are you applying to Solve?
We are always looking for like-minded partners who are driven to create financially viable and environmentally beneficial solutions. Through the MIT Solve network, we hope to make these connections outside of any grants and funding opportunities.
What types of connections and partnerships would be most catalytic for your solution?
Solution Team
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Dr. Garry Cooper CEO, Rheaply
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