nornnorn

nornnorn - Circular economy-based mattress subscription platform

nornnorn - Circular economy-based mattress subscription platform

nornnorn is the world's first Circular Economy-based product subscription platform.

We help eliminate the upfront investment on high-value, long-life products, thereby lowering the access barrier to such products, whilst reducing the amount of waste, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions produced by the consumption system. Based on our Founder & CEO’s decade-long experience and expertise in the mattress industry, the first product category that we focus on is mattress for hospitality businesses.

Available in Thailand and Indonesia since Q3 2018, our mattress subscriptions last between 60 and 120 months, durations that are in line with the hospitality industry’s standard mattress replacement cycles. The high quality mattresses provided are purchased from leading local manufacturers (our supplier partners) with debt financing powered by green bonds. At the end of every subscription, used mattresses are retrieved, disassembled and recycled free of charge.

As we scale up, we will expand our service to the B2C market and other countries across the globe and apply our business model to other high-value, long-life products, such as batteries, solar cells and electronic appliances.

[Please turn on the English subtitle in the VDO clip by clicking on the subtitle icon in the bottom right corner of the clip.]

nornnorn is the world's first Circular Economy-based product subscription platform.

We help eliminate the upfront investment on high-value, long-life products, thereby lowering the access barrier to such products, whilst reducing the amount of waste, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions produced by the consumption system. Based on our Founder & CEO’s decade-long experience and expertise in the mattress industry, the first product category that we focus on is mattress for hospitality businesses.

Available in Thailand and Indonesia since Q3 2018, our mattress subscriptions last between 60 and 120 months, durations that are in line with the hospitality industry’s standard mattress replacement cycles. The high quality mattresses provided are purchased from leading local manufacturers (our supplier partners) with debt financing powered by green bonds. At the end of every subscription, used mattresses are retrieved, disassembled and recycled free of charge.

As we scale up, we will expand our service to the B2C market and other countries across the globe and apply our business model to other high-value, long-life products, such as batteries, solar cells and electronic appliances.

[Please turn on the English subtitle in the VDO clip by clicking on the subtitle icon in the bottom right corner of the clip.]

Prior to starting nornnorn, our Founder & CEO spent over ten years developing and executing strategies for his parents’ Thailand-based mattress and bedding manufacturing and trading business, a part of his family’s 89-year-old group of mattress and bedding companies. Over the decade, he discovered that there were four main pain points faced by the hospitality and mattress industries globally, namely:

- Most hospitality businesses could not afford to purchase high quality, comfortable mattresses to serve their guests due to limited CapEx budgets;
- Due to their long return on investment, all hospitality businesses would rather pay for mattresses over a long period of time than with a lump sum payment;
- All hospitality businesses did not have any eco-friendly solutions to dispose of their used mattresses; and
- Mattresses were not recycled as it was not financially viable to do so. (Currently the most eco-friendly, economically viable way to dispose of mattresses is to use them as refuse-derived fuels. However, across the world, except in some developed countries, used mattresses are commonly placed in landfills, openly burned, or fly-tipped.)

We have neatly solved the aforementioned pain points by providing affordable access to high quality mattresses through our subscription programmes and including the recycling costs in the monthly subscription fees, thereby making end-of-life mattress recycling economically viable.

Now serving hotels and resorts in Thailand and Indonesia with subscription fees starting from USD2.30/mattress/month, over the next six years, we look forward to saving at least 5.2 million mattresses from entering landfills and giving a new life to over 91 thousand tonnes of used materials. By doing so, we will prevent at least 126 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide from getting emitted, equivalent to removing 27,400 cars from the road for one full year.

To better manage the risk of default that our business model faces, we are currently using Data Science to develop a predictive credit risk assessment framework to enable us to create a dynamic pricing model that will adjust the subscription fees to match our customers’ risk profiles.

To quantify the amount of waste and greenhouse gas emissions that we will help reduce over the coming years, we have commissioned Thailand’s Technology and Informatics Institute for Sustainability (TIIS) to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment of our business model. Funded partly by an USD28,000-grant from Thailand’s Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy Council (NXPO), the one-year research is expected to be completed by May 2022. The work is the first of its kind for the country’s mattress industry.

Additionally, to prepare for the eventual return and recycling of our mattresses, our quest to maximise the economic value of end-of-life mattresses, starting from the polyurethane foams that will be retrieved from the used products, is already underway. Supported by an GBP80,000-grant from the Royal Academy of Engineering through the Engineering X Transforming Systems through Partnership programme as well as another GBP80,000-grant from NXPO through Thailand’s National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), the technology is being developed by the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in collaboration with the University of Cambridge.

Prior to starting nornnorn, our Founder & CEO spent over ten years developing and executing strategies for his parents’ Thailand-based mattress and bedding manufacturing and trading business, a part of his family’s 89-year-old group of mattress and bedding companies. Over the decade, he discovered that there were four main pain points faced by the hospitality and mattress industries globally, namely:

- Most hospitality businesses could not afford to purchase high quality, comfortable mattresses to serve their guests due to limited CapEx budgets;
- Due to their long return on investment, all hospitality businesses would rather pay for mattresses over a long period of time than with a lump sum payment;
- All hospitality businesses did not have any eco-friendly solutions to dispose of their used mattresses; and
- Mattresses were not recycled as it was not financially viable to do so. (Currently the most eco-friendly, economically viable way to dispose of mattresses is to use them as refuse-derived fuels. However, across the world, except in some developed countries, used mattresses are commonly placed in landfills, openly burned, or fly-tipped.)

We have neatly solved the aforementioned pain points by providing affordable access to high quality mattresses through our subscription programmes and including the recycling costs in the monthly subscription fees, thereby making end-of-life mattress recycling economically viable.

Now serving hotels and resorts in Thailand and Indonesia with subscription fees starting from USD2.30/mattress/month, over the next six years, we look forward to saving at least 5.2 million mattresses from entering landfills and giving a new life to over 91 thousand tonnes of used materials. By doing so, we will prevent at least 126 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide from getting emitted, equivalent to removing 27,400 cars from the road for one full year.

To better manage the risk of default that our business model faces, we are currently using Data Science to develop a predictive credit risk assessment framework to enable us to create a dynamic pricing model that will adjust the subscription fees to match our customers’ risk profiles.

To quantify the amount of waste and greenhouse gas emissions that we will help reduce over the coming years, we have commissioned Thailand’s Technology and Informatics Institute for Sustainability (TIIS) to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment of our business model. Funded partly by an USD28,000-grant from Thailand’s Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy Council (NXPO), the one-year research is expected to be completed by May 2022. The work is the first of its kind for the country’s mattress industry.

Additionally, to prepare for the eventual return and recycling of our mattresses, our quest to maximise the economic value of end-of-life mattresses, starting from the polyurethane foams that will be retrieved from the used products, is already underway. Supported by an GBP80,000-grant from the Royal Academy of Engineering through the Engineering X Transforming Systems through Partnership programme as well as another GBP80,000-grant from NXPO through Thailand’s National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), the technology is being developed by the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in collaboration with the University of Cambridge.

https://www.nornnorn.com/