If you’re starting a new business, should you go with traditional linear commerce or jump into recommerce?
In this clip from the ReCommerce Podcast, Tuomo Laine (CEO of TWICE Commerce) lays out practical advice for new entrepreneurs deciding between the two paths. It’s not about choosing one or the other—it’s about understanding the hidden value in the products you sell.
Recommerce gives you more than one way to make money: flip used goods, offer rentals, or build subscription services. But it all starts with one key question: can you get the supply, and can you finance it?
Even if you go linear, there’s untapped value in securing buyback relationships from day one—and sometimes, that secondhand inventory comes back free.
Karri: Then I want to move into this hypothetical situation—like if I’m a new entrepreneur, I’m starting a new business. Why should I go to recommerce or linear? Or I guess in your case, you’re probably advocating more on the recommerce side, but why choose that?
Tuomo: Yeah, actually, I would say that I don’t advocate either-or. I just say that if you go linear, you should be looking after the goods that you sell out. There’s an opportunity to make more money out of those.
In recommerce, it’s always a question of where do you get the supply and how do you finance it?
Maybe if you start as a new entrepreneur, I think there’s usually a correlation that you’re super, super enthusiastic about a certain product category—for example, bikes or cameras or similar. So you know that category super well, you know how you might be able to repair these things, or you have some kind of niche understanding that you feel you can commercialize.
So there’s an information asymmetry which allows you to maybe secure supply from an aftermarket. That might be cheaper to get into—it’s cheaper to buy a used vinyl than a new one, and maybe you can make a margin on it.
Or on the service side, if you know, for example, what kind of experiences people want to have with e-biking in a forest, you’re putting a lot of that value into the experience delivery. Then the bike is just there to facilitate that delivery.
So I think that would be the reasons to go there. But even if you would just go linear and buy new stuff and sell it out, I think you should have this thought in your head: hey, I just bought something quite expensive, I sold it out, I know there’s this secondhand supply there. I can from day zero establish a relationship with this customer saying that if there ever is a time that you don’t need this anymore, or you want to upgrade it or whatever—just bring it to me.
There’s even regulation pushing merchants in the European Union at least toward this kind of behavior. But it’s just good business—taking those back. And in some cases, you can get it back for free, and that’s a valuable asset, usually, on some level.
So even though you go linear, I would still think about the value of those assets that you put out there and whether you could secure them back with some kind of cheap method.