Circular success: Why designing for the seller and buyer is critical

Circularity isn’t just a nod to brand heritage - it’s a signal of intent.

Circularity is a deliberate decision to build products, experiences, and relationships that are designed to last from the very beginning. It’s how brands show up for their customers - not just at the point of sale, but across a lifetime of use, repair, renewal, and resale.

When embedded from the start, circularity shifts from a sustainability side project to something far more strategic. It becomes a customer loyalty strategy, a growth engine, and a storytelling platform that keeps your brand relevant, emotionally resonant, and commercially strong.

The dual-persona dilemma

Many circular services fail, not because the model is flawed, but because the customer experience is incomplete. Too often, resale and repair initiatives are designed around what’s operationally convenient or positioned as sustainability messaging, without considering who they're truly for. 

This blog focuses on resale - one of the fastest growing circular models across industries from fashion to electronics. The dual-persona challenge is more prevalent here: a clear distinction between the two different user needs, both of which must be addressed for circularity to scale successfully. 

The truth is: circularity has two customers.

• The Seller - who wants speed, ease, and fair value.
• The Buyer - who expects trust, quality, and a premium experience.

Most brands only design for one. 

This narrow focus leads to friction, lost trust, and low adoption. And in a world where repair and resale are no longer niche but expected, circular experiences must be as seamless as buying new, or they risk damaging both loyalty and brand relevance.

The real challenge: Friction kills loyalty 

Even with the right personas in mind, circular journeys fail when friction gets in the way.

• For Sellers: Drop-off occurs when the process is slow and clunky, pricing lacks transparency, or the listing requires too much effort.

• For Buyers: Abandonment is driven by a lack of trust - unclear product conditions, missing guarantees, or poor digital experiences.

This is the fundamental challenge. Brands must match the ease of buying new. Build trust through authentication, hygiene, and a premium experience. Buyers expect the same confidence as buying new. And solving it requires designing every circular touchpoint around human behaviour, not operational constraints.

Like life, this isn’t black and white

While it’s helpful to distinguish between buyer and seller personas, brands often make the mistake of treating them as entirely separate. In reality, they’re often the same person at different points in the journey. A loyal buyer today might become a seller tomorrow… and vice versa.

Circularity, by its very essence, encourages connection, collaboration, continuity and a sense of co-ownership. Both personas are ultimately seeking the same things: trust, value, relevance, and a reason to stay connected.

The goal isn’t just to serve two distinct needs. It’s to design a shared, seamless experience that adapts to a customer’s evolving relationship with the brand.

Designing for both personas: Strategy at a glance 

Strong circular propositions begin with deep customer understanding, not just operational feasibility or cost modelling. And to serve both the seller and buyer effectively, brands and sellers need to move beyond one-size-fits-all offers. They must create integrated propositions that recognise where these two personas differ, where they overlap, and how they can be engaged through a single, unified strategy.

There are multiple resale models in existence today. Examples include: 

• Peer-to-peer resale (e.g. Vinted, Depop)
• Brand-led resale (e.g. Lululemon, Burberry)
• Marketplace-led resale (e.g eBay, Vestiaire)
• Direct-to-consumer pre-owned by retailers (e.g. Selfridges-Reselfridges, John Lewis Buyback & resale pilots).

While each model carries unique nuances - from pricing ownership to customer support - many of the core customer experience and proposition design principles remain consistent.

The table below combines some key customer journey touchpoints with proposition design principles to offer a clear, strategic view of how to meet the needs of both personas, side by side:

The common mistake is designing for just one persona. The competitive edge lies in recognising (and serving) both.

Circular customer journey optimisation

From awareness to re-engagement, the circular journey must be intentionally mapped for both personas. Key strategies include:

• Identifying friction points for sellers (e.g. listing effort, unclear value) and buyers (e.g. trust, authentication, logistics).
• Embedding circular touchpoints in primary retail flows, not hidden in sustainability pages.
• Optimising trade-in, resale, and returns using digital CX best practices.
• Designing unified in-store and online journeys (e.g. physical drop-off for online resale).

Final thought: Circularity is a capability, not a campaign 

Circularity done right isn’t an afterthought. It’s not a marketing message or seasonal plot. It’s a strategic capability, one that touches every part of the customer experience from digital journeys to physical returns, from post-purchase moments to resale re-engagement.

When circular experiences are designed around real customer behaviour, not brand operations or internal silos, they become engines for growth, loyalty, and differentiation.

The most effective brands will be those that stop thinking in parts:

• Not just buyer or seller, but the fluid journey between the two.
• Not just pilots, but fully integrated systems built to scale.

Optimising for circularity means designing journeys that remove friction, build trust, and meet customers where they are - across touchpoints, time, and roles. It also means building propositions that serve both personas simultaneously: emotionally resonant, financially rewarding, and operationally seamless.

The opportunity isn’t in choosing between customers, it’s in designing for both, from day one.

Questions to have you thinking 

• Are your customer journeys truly optimised for both the seller and the buyer, or is one persona being underserved? 
• Is your CRM designed to capture a customer’s evolution from buyer to seller, or is that behaviour going unseen?
• Do your teams understand how their roles must shift to support a circular model, or is change happening without clarity?
• Are your people, processes, and platforms equipped to support the behaviour shifts circularity demands, at scale?
• Is there clear leadership buy-in on how circularity drives commercial value, or is it still viewed as a sustainability project?

If any of these questions resonate or reflect conversations happening within your organisation, get in touch to explore how we can support you. Whether that's assessing circular readiness, optimising journeys, or implementing change.