How Swappie is recharging Ireland’s circular economy

Podcast Ep 361: We talk to Swappie CEO Jussi Lystimäki about achieving profitability, how Ireland is one of its strongest markets and the importance of growing Ireland’s circular economy.

The circular economy is one of those terms that are constantly bandied about when we talk about sustainability and doing more for the planet, but without ordinary people playing the part it is just words.

That’s why Ireland’s consumers being among Europe’s biggest smartphone hoarders, with 69% keeping unused devices at home, is one of those subjects the CEO of refurbished smarphone specialist Swappie Jussi Lystimäki is keen to get to grips with.

Lystimäki is no stranger to Ireland having previously worked on the acquisition of DoneDeal.ie by Schibsted Media Group.

Helsinki headquartered Swappie recently achieved its first full year of profitability, reaching €2.5 million in the first four trading months of 2025.

Dialing up the circular opportunity

On the one hand refurbishing smartphones seems like a no-brainer for the circular economy, but it is not as easy as it seems. Lystimäki says hard lessons were taken on board during the business’s first decade.

In the early days, he says, it was about being cheaper, helping people to make savings on devices. Now it is much deeper. “It’s all about trust and quality because people need to trust that the devices can function.” The smartphone, he says, “has basically become your life, your wallet, payments, apps, banking and whatnot, so it really needs to function.”

“For us it’s been a learning curve to really invest in repair capabilities and in quality processes and data wiping and so forth. We have a lot of returning customers, and that has been a gift for us – we have very low aftermarket cost because so little gets returned or breaks. So we’re driving the unit economics quite well on that. Quality really lifts up this business, but it’s been a learning journey. It’s not an easy business to start up, and nobody has a playbook for how to do it. We’ve been learning it the hard way and investing a lot, and now I think we are in a good place.”

Achieving profitability, Lystimäki says, was about discipline. The business raised €171 million in venture funding over four rounds, betting on a category that he believes will eventually mirror the car market, where used vehicles will make up a majority of sales.

Internal discipline, trimming overcapacity in automation and tightening prices and processes created a shift for the business alongside a maturing market for refurbished smartphone devices.

“Once you hit certain quality thresholds that you can trust that devices are not coming back, people are trusting you, so it becomes a more positive cycle.”

Ireland’s hoarding habits

Ireland ranks among the highest in Europe for keeping unused phones at home, but despite this Lystimäki said the market has responded strongly to Swappie.

“I think the reason Ireland has been so good for refurbished phones and devices, and especially for Swappie, is that there’s a strong confidence among people – once they experience the quality, they really know it and tell their friends. Referral is really strong for us, and we’ve been seeing that.”

Swappie began with smartphone devices but has since expanded into areas like iPads, Airpods and notebook devices like MacBooks.

The scale of the opportunity in phones remains significant. New electronics sales across Europe total around €650 billion a year, Lystimäki said, compared with a second-hand market of roughly €20 billion, a gap that he attributes to consumer habits as much as device value.

In this sense he believes Irish people really buy into the circular economy concept.

“People are really taking to it,” he said of Irish attitudes to second-hand trading.

“I think it’s the whole mindset of circularity – a different mindset, and also a mindset realising that in certain categories, in certain product types, there’s a strong circularity aspect, and we’re not necessarily born into that mindset. But what we’ve seen is that a big part of our buyers are the younger generation, and they take it as normal – like vintage clothing, they’re used to that kind of behaviour. They buy shoes, and then they sell them on the next year. It’s a very different mindset – my mother is 93, and she thinks, ‘I’ll hold onto it just in case.’ This younger generation thinks, ‘I don’t want to store it, I’ll sell it forward and buy the next one.’”

Lystimäki’s Irish links go back to the acquisition of Wexford business DoneDeal in 2011 and later acquiring the rest of the business, before merging it with Adverts.ie and Daft.ie in 2015 to create the Distilled Group, where he served on the board for several years.

“I had been building second-hand marketplaces or online classifieds for 15 years. In 2011 we bought 50% of DoneDeal in Wexford, and later the rest of the business. Ireland really showed that it’s a very good country for this kind of concept — people really took to it, and DoneDeal really drove into motors, farming and different categories very well.

“Then in 2015 we did a deal with Adverts.ie and Daft.ie and created the Distilled Group, and I was on the board there for a couple of years. That showed me that Ireland is a really interesting country – people are super happy to interact peer-to-peer trading, they’re very entrepreneurial, and very much focused on green values. It was interesting to see how strong green values are in Ireland.

“But I think the reason Ireland has been so good for refurbished phones and devices, and especially for Swappie, is that there’s a strong confidence among people – once they experience the quality, they really know it and tell their friends. Referral is really strong for us, and we’ve been seeing that. We’re getting a lot of good traction in Ireland. I’d say it’s still early days – if half the population is using iPhones, we’re not talking about 2m buyers for Swappie yet – I think this is a fantastic market for this kind of business.”

👉 No tech background needed to bring your business into the AI age! Secure your Google AI Professional Certificate to complete the certification at no cost. Apply now and get started!

• Bank of Ireland is welcoming new customers every day – funding investments, working capital and expansions across multiple sectors. To learn more, click here

• For support in challenging times, click here

• Listen to the ThinkBusiness Podcast for business insights and inspiration. All episodes are here. You can also listen to the Podcast on:

• Spotify

• SoundCloud

• Apple