Circular Strategy at Philips: Turning Trade-Ins Into Revenue

Irresistible Circular Business

How can a 100+ year old linear company transform its processes to make circularity commercially irresistible?

In this episode, Patrick Lerou, Global Lead for Circularity, and co-host Florian Witt, Director of Technology at INDEED Innovation, discuss how Philips built a circular system for high-value medical equipment that turns trade-ins into revenue, parts harvesting into supply chain resilience, and refurbishment into a competitive advantage.

What you'll hear in this episode: • How Philips uses a three-tier triage system to maximize value from returned equipment through resale, parts harvesting, or certified recycling. • Why "seeing is believing" works as a sales strategy, with factory tours convincing procurement directors and even governments of refurbishment quality. • How the Suez Canal crisis revealed circularity's hidden benefit: supply chain resilience through self-sourced components.

This episode covers the operational mechanics and commercial logic behind enterprise-scale circularity, including how to navigate fragmented global regulations and connect data points.

This is the fourth episode in the series Irresistible Circular Business, sponsored by INDEED Innovation, the global design and innovation firm pioneering the Circular Economy. The series showcases business practices that deliver irresistible commercial and circular results, with examples from different industries across different R-strategies.

People Patrick Lerou, Global Lead in Circularity & Chief of Staff Circular Lifetime Solutions at Philips https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricklerou/

Florian Witt, Director of Technology at INDEED Innovation https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-m-witt/

Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/

Chapters 00:00 Introduction 04:25 How Philips Went Circular 08:00 Motivation for Circularity 12:15 Causes of Resistance and Winning Customers 19:35 Regulation Roadblocks Worldwide 22:49 Importance of Collaboration in Health Care 24:16 Circular KPIs That Prove Value 28:00 Data Insights and Supply Resilience 34:16 Designing Circular Business 40:46 Outro

About Philips is a Dutch health-technology company founded in 1891 and headquartered in Amsterdam, with tens of thousands of employees operating in more than 100 countries and annual sales of roughly €15–20 billion in recent years. After decades as a diversified electronics group, it is now focused on health tech, offering medical imaging and diagnosis systems, image-guided therapy solutions, patient monitoring and connected care, as well as selected consumer health and personal care products.

In its circular-economy work, Philips runs “Circular Edition” and other circular equipment portfolios that supply refurbished and pre-owned medical systems restored to “as-new” quality, along with refurbished consumer products where appropriate. The company also offers take-back for all professional medical equipment it sells directly, prioritizing refurbishment and parts harvesting, and using certified recyclers at true end-of-life to extend product lifetimes, reduce virgin material use, and avoid landfill.

Further Links ReCommerce Playbook https://www.indeed-innovation.com/the-recommerce-playbook-from-returns-to-revenue/ 

More on Philips Factory: https://www.philips.de/a-w/about/news/archive/standard/news/2025/202503-philips-werk-hamburg-gewinnt-nachhaltigkeitsauszeichnung.html

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