From chaos to Circular – the AI platform fixing resale for good

The resale market is having its moment. What used to be the quiet domain of charity shops, garage sales and flea markets has become one of the fastest-growing segments in global retail.

Why? Because secondhand is no longer a compromise. For consumers, it’s a smarter way to shop: more affordable, more unique and more in line with values around conscious consumption. For governments, it’s a lever for reducing waste and extending product life cycles. For retailers, it’s becoming a core strategy to attract customers and keep goods in circulation.

But there’s a catch. Running a resale operation – especially at scale – is notoriously difficult. Logging, pricing, tracking and managing payouts for thousands of individual items is messy, time-consuming and often unprofitable. This is exactly the problem the Norwegian company Circular set out to solve – and they’ve automated the entire process.

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The New Resale Landscape

To understand the opportunity, it helps to take a step back. The resale market has evolved from a niche trend into a mainstream force, shaped by several key forces:

Evolving Shopper Mindset

Consumers are rethinking how they shop. Buying secondhand is increasingly seen as a responsible and intentional way to acquire products – often of higher quality than what’s available today.

Policy pressure‍

Governments across Europe are pushing initiatives like Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), Digital Product Passports (DPP) and tax reforms that favor reuse. In Norway, for example, the Brukthandellova (a restrictive law around secondhand sales) was scrapped and VAT reforms now encourage reuse.

Technology readiness‍

Resale used to be analog: clipboards, sticky notes, manual spreadsheets. Today, AI-powered image recognition, real-time data dashboards and seamless payment systems make the entire resale lifecycle fully digital.

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Why Resale Is Hard Without Tech

Managing a resale business is harder than it looks. Every item, every price, every update takes time – and without the right tools, things quickly fall behind.

• Item intake is slow – each product needs to be logged, described, photographed, categorized and priced. With hundreds of items per week, this quickly eats staff hours.
• Pricing is a guessing game – without data, pricing relies on intuition – too high and items linger, too low and margins suffer.
• Sellers lack transparency – consignors often wonder: “Has my item sold? When will I get paid?” Answering those questions manually is a drain on staff.‍
• Inventory gets messy – tracking thousands of unique SKUs across physical stores and online channels is complex.

Circular was born out of this reality. Originally founded as Cirkulær AS, a small chain of physical consignment stores, the team learned firsthand how hard resale is to manage.

By late 2023, they had proven it could be profitable, but they also knew the model wouldn’t scale without better tools. In 2024, they spun out the technology they had built in-house and launched Circular: a cloud-based, AI-powered platform built specifically for resale.

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What Makes It Different

Circular’s platform automates the full consignment lifecycle:

AI-powered intake‍

Items are captured via photo – AI recognizes the details to speed up product listing and suggests categories like brand or material.

Smart pricing assistant‍

Using sales history and contextual data, the system recommends optimal prices to maximize sell-through.

Branded seller portals‍

Consignors get their own digital dashboard to schedule drop-offs, track sales and request payouts.

Inventory visibility‍

Every item is tracked from intake to final sale, donation or return.

‍Data insights‍

Real-time dashboards help shop owners see what’s selling, what’s stagnating and where to adjust strategy.

Seamless integrations‍

Works with point-of-sale (POS) systems like Zettle and Extenda, as well as Shopify for online stores, ensuring sales and inventory are tracked in real time across all channels.

Pay-as-you-grow model‍

Rather than a fixed subscription, Circular charges only when items sell. Businesses with less than $1,000 in monthly sales can use the platform for free, making it accessible to smaller operations.

In other words, Circular gives resale shops the same digital infrastructure that big e-commerce players have had for years – but customized to the particular challenges of secondhand.

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Proof It Works

In early 2025, Fretex Kuratert, a leading Norwegian resale brand, adopted Circular’s platform. Sellers now enjoy full transparency, while staff can focus on curating items rather than administrative tasks.

That same year, Circular’s innovative impact was recognized on the national stage when it was named one of the top five finalists for Norway’s inaugural RetailTech Company of the Year award.

At the same time, participation in innovation labs such as Smart Innovation Norway’s MoTech project has further demonstrated how Circular’s automation can make resale operations not only more efficient, but also scalable and profitable.

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Closing the Loop

Circular’s founders like to emphasize one idea: resale should be good business, not just good intentions. With consumer demand rising, regulations opening doors and AI making resale manageable at scale, the conditions are ripe for a transformation.

Norway may be the launchpad, but the logic is universal: in a world where waste is out and circulation is in, technology is the key to making reuse resilient, profitable and enduring.