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Online shopping is zero waste - empty bottles are left outside the door, and The Rounds will come to your door to restock for you Have you ever felt guilty when unpacking a package? The carton is filled with layers of bubble wrap, and the plastic packaging has to be further unpacked. Finally, the product may have its own box. Although online shopping is convenient, it is inevitably accompanied by the guilt of excessive packaging. Alexander Torrey, the co-founder of The Rounds, wants to reverse these wasteful habits. His approach is actually very simple. Daily necessities, so that you don't have to spend extra resources to order packages again and again, but also keep all daily consumables complete at any time. Entrepreneurship solves its own problems, and wants the apartment building to "replenish like a restaurant" The Rounds' concept of environmentally friendly logistics stems from Torrey's pain points as a US resident. Torrey said that for people like him who live in apartment complexes and don't have cars, restocking groceries involves making trips to distant stores and returning home with bulky items. Because they don't want to be so troublesome, most people will order online and wait for it to be delivered to their door, but if they just need to buy some small supplies, he thinks this is quite wasteful and uneconomical. For example, once he found out that he was running out of hand sanitizer, he ordered the same product online, but when the package arrived, he felt a sense of guilt, “It’s just a small bottle of hand sanitizer, but it’s in a big bottle. In the small cardboard box in the box, there is still a bunch of plastic wrapped, and it looks exactly like the empty bottle on my sink. Obviously, the lifespan of plastic can be used for hundreds of years, but I have to throw it away in less than 100 days Already,” Torrey said. At this time, he thought that the neighbors who live in the same apartment as him actually need to regularly order hand sanitizer and other household necessities. Don't have to buy consumables yourself? Thinking of this, Torrey, who once founded Umano, an e-commerce company for children's art works, and worked at the venture capital company Dorm Room Fund at the time, discovered the direction of his second venture. He told this idea to his business school classmate Byungwoo Ko and cooperated. Through Byungwoo Ko With Uber and Uber Eats in charge of operational planning, the way The Rounds operates has taken shape. Reproduce the "goat milk delivery" service in the past and establish a zero-waste closed logistics cycle Just like the goat milk delivery service in the past, someone went to your home early in the morning to help recycle empty bottles and deliver new goat milk. The Rounds replenishment method is also very similar. The specific process is: Choose your usual daily necessities and groceries on The Rounds and create your own "Replenishment Warehouse" page Select the quantity you need to replenish for each item this week, for example, you need 5 bagels, 1 box of disinfectant wipes, 2 laundry balls, and choose to skip and not replenish the items that are not used up When it comes to the weekly "Refill Day", The Rounds will deliver the full supplies to the door, you just need to put the empty bottles that have been used up outside the door In order to effectively reduce the waste of resources, basically all containers are filled with recyclable glass jars and reusable bags provided by The Rounds. When users run out of use, The Rounds will recycle and sterilize the empty bottles and bags, and then send them to For others who need supplies. That is to say, taking supplementary hand sanitizer as an example, The Round will cooperate with cleaning supply stores to allow merchants to directly pack hand sanitizer into the containers provided by The Rounds, and send delivery personnel to regularly deliver them to users in need. However, The Rounds replenishment method is high frequency of replenishment, but only a short-term amount is replenished at a time, so it is mainly suitable for daily necessities that are consumed quickly, such as toilet paper and alcohol. And because the containers provided by The Rounds have to be used, the source of goods is mainly small and medium-sized stores or individual sellers, and it is difficult to cooperate with well-known brands or large retailers. There are currently about 150 individual products on The Rounds, in categories ranging from household items such as cleaning utensils, seasonings, coffee beans, jams, snack drinks and hygiene products. Cooperate with local sellers in the community to achieve the two advantages of saving parcel consumables and free of disposable containers There are two major benefits of using The Rounds service: the first is to save the consumables needed to purchase and send packages online, and the second is that The Rounds only uses re-sterilized containers to pack any goods, so that you can avoid the use of disposable Waste of containers. In addition, unlike ordinary e-commerce websites, the order is sent out after the order is placed and cannot be changed. The Rounds allows members to adjust the transaction items and time before the replenishment day. Make the supply of The Rounds best match the actual consumption situation. In addition to being able to modify the replenishment quantity at any time, when the QR code on the returned empty bottle is scanned, The Rounds will also use data calculations to understand the frequency of your replenishment of the product, and recommend the need on the webpage at the right time The replenishment products are for you, as Torrey described: "The Rounds will be your smart and environmentally friendly replenishment steward." The Rounds adopts a paid membership system, and you can start using the replenishment service by paying $10 per month, but the replenishment content will still be charged separately according to the selected items. It is worth noting that The Rounds delivery staff mainly use electric bicycles, and recently The Rounds has also cooperated with BrightDrop, a new electric transporter, to explore and test how different types of electric transport can be used for delivery innovation. Completed USD 38 million A-round fundraising, with more than 10,000 users in Philadelphia, Washington DC and other places After The Rounds was initially launched in Philadelphia, the United States, it has now expanded to the remaining three markets, namely Washington, D.C., Miami and Atlanta. Torrey said that in the past year, The Rounds has grown by more than 10 times and has more than 10,000 active members member. Torrey did not disclose the earnings of The Rounds, but he emphasized that the single transaction alone has made a profit. The credibility of this claim seems to be reflected in the fundraising results of The Rounds, which recently announced the completion of a $38 million Series A funding round, the latest round of investment was led by investors Annie Kadavy of Redpoint Ventures and Andrew Chen of Andreessen Horowitz. , the participating list includes Construct Capital and First Round Capital. Torrey said that The Rounds will use the latest funds to expand the team, especially hoping to enter the existing market more deeply and actively expand to new regions. The long-term goal is to hope that all major cities and suburbs in the United States can spread The Rounds footprint.
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