World's Biggest Garage Sale

Award-winning Yasmin Grigaliunas, CEO and Co-founder of the World’s Biggest Garage Sale (WBGS), is on a mission to turn Australia’s circular economy aspirations into reality while at the same time providing social good. In 2017 she ditched a lucrative salary to commit full-time to her role as CEO and Co-founder of WBGS, a Brisbane based organisation designing solutions to commercialise the circular economy through the activation of dormant goods for good. She is living proof that we can make a positive impact on people’s lives and the future of the planet through the events and experiences we create.

World's Biggest Garage Sale (WBGS) is solving the issue of waste and promoting responsible consumerism by revolutionising the “secondhand” economy. We are connecting the principles of the circular economy to “resale-retail”. Our resource recovery marketplace integrates digital technology to identify objects, facilitate their progress through relevant “next life journeys” and maintain visibility on those objects throughout these journeys. This maintains the potential to continuously extract maximum economic, social and environmental value over time and prevent loss to landfill. This initiative helps to elevate humanity in a number of ways; (1) engaging with our store and services is guaranteed to benefit people (via employment opportunities and upskilling), the planet (through diversion of landfill) and to provide purpose (such as community engagement, education, support). 

In Australia there is $43 billion worth of underutilised ‘stuff’ in homes at risk of ending up in landfill and US$500-billion is lost globally (annually) due to underutilisation & lack of recycling (World Economic Forum & Ellen MacArthur Foundation). WBGS is a circular economy, profit for purpose organisation that is creating a resource recovery platform to tackle this challenge and revolutionise “resale- retail” globally. The issue of waste is a global problem, affecting billions of people. The World Bank estimates without urgent action, global waste will increase by 70% on current levels by 2050. The mismanagement of waste harms local communities and contributes to climate change - with global waste contributing to approximately 5% of global emissions. Consumerism and our current 'throw-away' culture is a huge contributor to this landfill, with individuals and businesses often disposing of items that are still useful or could be salvaged, cutting their lifecycle and lifetime value short. We are tackling this issue by capturing unwanted household goods and obsolete stock (via businesses) before it becomes waste and reselling it via our resource recover marketplace. Offering a sustainable way to get rid of unwanted items, and affordable sustainable shopping options for the wider community. 

A significant driver of landfill is the lack of connection between product owners, those wishing to take on ownership of that product and those that can use that product to extract value from it’s core material or components. This means products end up in landfill with unrealised value that could have been accessed through resale, repurpose or recycling. We are “market makers” for this purpose. We connect multiple parties to leverage a variety of new value streams connected to a product’s lifecycle journey. 

Essentially, we use multiple supply chains and streams to salvage and capture products at risk of ending up in landfill. These goods are then quality assured and filtered through our resource recovery marketplace where they are either resold, repaired, or repurposed to maximise their lifetime value. In addition to this model we are currently working with an AI partner to integrate machine-learning and blockchain technology into our process to track the lifetime value and cycle of materials.  

We are tackling the reverse logistics of potential waste, proactively recovering resources and bringing tracking and measurement to the secondhand economy. WBGS are bringing second hand products out of op shops and into Resale Retail mainstream.  According to thredUP, resale apparel is growing 21x faster than retail apparel industry.

Gen X and Y will be targeted for activation of dormant goods (6.5M Australians). Gen Y and Gen Z will be targeted as consumers looking to purchase more sustainably. Gen Z are estimated to make up 32% of the global population (Lu & Miller, 2018). Gen Y and Gen Z demographics are driving this shift to sustainability with approximately 75% and 72%, respectively, indicating social and environmental impact drive their purchase decisions (Nielsen, 2015). 

Australian consumers and businesses believe landfill waste and impact on the natural environment are 2 of the top 3 sustainability concerns. This aligns with the Federal 2018 National Waste Policy, such as avoiding waste & improving resource recovery & Queensland’s new Waste Strategy to become a zero-waste society, where waste is avoided, reused and recycled to the greatest possible extent.

Waste is a 'wicked problem', we are elevating this issue to bring it to the forefront of the conversation and offering a solution via circular economy and resource recovery. Our team pride ourselves on being action-takers or "can-sultants" opposed to consultants. We are immersed in the issue of waste and driving new and innovative ways to tackle this issue from a consumer perspective. We pride ourselves on delivering high-quality community education and driving awareness as part of our responsibility to revolutionising the way we shop and our relationship with "stuff". 

Yas Grigaliunas, CEO of WBGS, did a spring clean back in 2013 and decided to hold a garage sale to sell the family ‘stuff’, then donate the money to charity.  She put the call out to her friends to see if anyone else wanted to clean out their homes.  They did, and so did their friends! Soon there were hundreds of people wanting to do the same thing, many of whom Yasmin had never met.  And before Yas knew it, the World’s Biggest Garage Sale was born. Our business started as a way to raise money for worthy causes, we have donated well over $300K since those humble beginnings in 2013. Instead of asking for money, WBGS turns dormant goods from households and businesses into much needed impact.

Fast forward to now, the focus for WBGS has broadened to encompass sustainability through circularity and creating employment opportunities for disadvantaged and vulnerable members of the community.

This business started in the family home, our founders saw a problem with having too much 'stuff' and wanted to find a way to utilise it for good. 7-years later we are still a family run business helping other families and businesses do good by giving goods and buying goods. Our business is supported by an amazing and passionate community of people in Brisbane and has grown to be loved and recognised state-wide with national and international interest. Our team has grown over the years but the passion and dedication for leaving the world in a better state than what we found it remains a strong driver of our business. 

Yasmin Grigaliunas is doing her part to activate communities across Australia to give their dormant goods for good where the items can receive second and third lifecycles. Yas is passionate about activating the circular economy at a local level to create major global impact which aligns to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. To date, Yas' work at WBGS has donated funds to multiple charities, diverted 3.3 million kilograms of goods from potential landfill, contributed $1.7 million worth of social value to the global economy, and created a passionate community around the circular principles of reuse, recycle, repurpose and recommerce.

Yas has a background in intrapreneurship, in her previous role she created a multi-million dollar sales department from the ground up, with award-winning growth year-on-year for over a decade. Transitioning successfully from B2B sales management to lead a project building the company online store, which today represents one of the largest contributors of revenue from a single B2C retail department.   ⠀

In 2017, Yas left her full-time role in the corporate world to pursue her passion in activating the circular economy through WBGS. What started as a friends and family charity fundraiser in 2013 had grown to an exciting community event attracting 20,000 shoppers in a single day.

Yas has been described as a “one-percenter” one of those people with a natural capacity and passion only matched by her energy for entrepreneurship. She loves to create purposeful impact with a focus on ‘doing’ and executing to create meaningful outcomes.

The most recent instance of having to persevere and overcome adversity would be the COVID19 pandemic which created a huge risk for our business which relies on large-scale events attracting thousands of single-day shoppers to shop our warehouse. 

When lockdown was announced in March this completely cut off a major projected income stream for an indefinite period of time - we still don't know when thousands of people will be allowed in the same space again. 

In addition to this our resource recovery warehouse was only in it's budding stages and we had planned to be open more regularly to allow customers to come through and browse and collect items.  

As a result of this, we had to pivot our business model in the current circumstances and challenges and up our online presence and further developed our online store channel to drive sales.

Our rapid response and innovative solutions have multiplied our opportunities. We have we secured a major national retailer partnership for resource recovery of returned goods, as well as multiple grants for digital transformation in the circular economy. 

Yas has been at the forefront of conversations around the circular economy, social enterprise and profit-for-purpose for years now, well before these subjects became trends. She has collaborated with other early innovators in these fields and helped strengthen the community who are passionate about purpose-led business. She is also a vocal spokesperson for female founders, female entrepreneurship and women in business. Yas has spoken at countless events centred around uplifting and empowering the female founders community. Yas is also a SheEO Activator and SheEO Venture, a global community of women radically transforming how we finance, support, and celebrate female innovators. 

Through retail ventures at WBGS we have supported the LGBTQIA community by providing a safe and open space for everyone at our events and within our business. Furthermore, through WBGS Yas has built an inclusive business that not only supports disadvantaged people within the community, the business also provides them with direct financial help. WBGS events have previously raised funds for The Courier Mail Children's Fund, Smile for Smiddy and The Mater Foundation. Directing funds to children in need within the Brisbane community.