ClearCycle

ClearCycle is a UK-based provider of reverse logistics and recommerce services for retailers, trading as CC Golbourne Limited. It offers a configurable suite of services intended to raise the financial yield retailers recover from customer returns and excess stock while lowering handling costs and diverting goods from landfill. The service set comprises analysis of product and market data, multi-category refurbishment, resale via a marketplace and managed branded webstores, an on-site auction house for low-value or non-repairable goods, and a "back to stock" route that returns refurbished items to the retailer for direct resale. A rental offering is listed as forthcoming.

The company positions itself as a single point of receipt and handling for returns, with carrier partnerships that allow stock to be routed to it directly from a retailer's carrier rather than via the retailer's own warehouse. Its stated process runs from consultation and profile-data analysis producing a yield forecast and operational roadmap, through stock receipt and discrepancy reporting for the retailer's audit trail, to inspection, refurbishment and routing into the exit channel expected to produce the highest blended yield, with ongoing trading and routing optimisation. ClearCycle frames the customer benefits in three groups: financial (higher yield, lower operating cost, more predictable cash flow), brand (control over how returned goods are marketed, adherence to brand guidelines, non-conflict with core ranges) and environmental (reuse, parts harvesting to minimise disposal, and auditable disposal of non-recoverable goods).

Founding story

According to the company, its founder was running a retail business and observed that returns volumes were growing year on year without an existing solution to simplify handling them or improve the financial, operational and environmental impact they created. ClearCycle was founded on that premise in 2016.

Business model

ClearCycle acts as an outsourced end-to-end handler of retailers' returns and overstock, taking receipt of goods, refurbishing them and routing them across multiple exit channels — resale marketplace and branded webstores, on-site auction, and return of refurbished items to the retailer's own stock — with the mix optimised to maximise blended financial recovery for the client.

Traction

For 2024 the company reports processing 42,000 items with a retail value of £25 million, inbounded across 1,036 full trailer loads. It cites an average resale price of 50% of original RRP and, in a client case, 60 hours per week of internal resource saved on returns management. It employs 50 people across engineering, technology and trading.

Latest developments

The company continues to publish insight articles on returns management, refurbishment, asset recovery and circular economy services in retail, with posts dated into March 2026. A rental service is advertised as coming soon.