Greener Retail Champions: Returnal co-founder Jake Margiotta

Ben Sillitoe

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In this series we talk to the individuals and companies helping retailers become greener businesses – highlighting the tools, technologies, and options available to support a change in environmental focus.

A new circularity tool for retailers became active in the market this week, when Lincolnshire based independent department store Downtown Stores, which runs shops in Grantham and Boston, began offering its customers the chance to trade in unwanted domestic appliances in return for credit.

The platform is provided by Returnal, which runs a system to handle the returned goods – overseeing the refurbishment and reselling of the items, or recycling them responsibly to reduce environmental harm of these products at the end of their life.

Returnal, which has its sights set on supporting the wider retail industry with its circularity platform, offers a service tracking each transaction and measuring impact across key areas such as carbon savings, resale revenue, credit issued, and products saved from waste. The tech gives retailers using it valuable data to include in their environmental reporting.

Green Retail World spoke to co-founder Jake Margiotta to find out more about Returnal and its direction of travel.

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What is Returnal and the Downtown Stores partnership?

Returnal’s partnership with Downtown Stores, which went live on Tuesday 29 April allows consumers in Lincolnshire to trade in items such as toasters, kettles, and blenders for instant store credit, with free shipping.

The goal is to make extracting value from unwanted items easy, rewarding, and impactful. All eligible appliances will either be refurbished and resold or responsibly recycled under Returnal’s zero-to-landfill promise. Some selected items will be donated to Shine Mental Health Charity to support vulnerable communities across Lincolnshire.

Consumers interested in participating can follow a quick online process, gain an instant estimate for store credit, ship their goods and receive the credit. All working items in ‘As New’, ‘Minor Imperfection’, or ‘Cosmetic Damage’ condition are eligible, and there is no limit on how many items can be traded in.

Returnal was incorporated in August 2022 and Margiotta is co-founder alongside long-term friend Luke Davies. In March 2025, the business successfully closed a £300,000 funding round led by SFC Capital with additional backing from British Business Investments as well as angel investment.

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What are the ambitions for Returnal over the next year?

Focusing on appliances, DIY, and furniture, the aim is to get the technology into major retail chains in the UK to support their sustainability strategies and the move to a more circular economy.

“Our ambition over the next 12 months is to extend the lifecycle of one million products and to win back a portion of the estimated £6 billion recommerce market for our enterprise retail customers,” Margiotta explains.

With Vinted, eBay, and other platforms providing an option for consumers to keep goods in circulation and get pay back for them, Returnal wants to support the retail industry play in this space with their own schemes.

“People trade second-hand products every day,” Margiotta says.

“Retailers have gone through expensive, complex, and challenging supply chain processes to bring those products to market and yet only sell each product once. Owning their own recommerce channels allows them to source sustainable products, create circular revenue streams, and even more significantly, retain the customer and powerful data they can leverage to build trust, transparency, and meaningful connections.”

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What makes Returnal stand out?

Returnal works with sustainability platform ekko to estimate the carbon saved from entering the atmosphere through each recommerce transaction.

“This means customers don’t just earn credit and feel good about their choices, they can see their impact in real carbon terms and participate in a growing movement of conscious consumerism,” the co-founder comments.

He says Returnal stands out because its white label solutions allow for “custom configurations and branding” which allows the retailer to the customer facing journey, while Returnal owns the product journey to keep goods out of their supply chains to avoid disrupting normal operations.

“It’s not just technology; it’s a complete eco-system that allows rapid deployment with minimal resource demand on our customers,” Margiotti argues.

He suggests using Returnal is less hassle than peer-to-peer platforms such as Facebook Marketplace, Vinted, and eBay because – for example – it takes away doorstep collections from strangers and avoids dealing with “time wasters”.

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Choices and opportunities

The retailer decides what to do with the products received via the take-back platform.

They can own their own resale mechanism, outsource it to Returnal, donate items to charity, or blend all of these depending on their priorities, according to Margiotti.

“Selling quality refurbished products at discounted prices also allows retailers selling aspirational brands to access new audiences with a lower disposable income,” he adds.

“Winning them over welcomes them to the brand and nurtures loyalty as their financial position evolves.”

The journey is only just starting for Margiotti, Davies, and Returnal, but with new legislation on the horizon banning retailers from destroying unwanted goods, the growing interest in pre-loved, and the continuation of a challenging economy, they have launched into a fertile space with significant opportunity to grow.

At Green Retail World we are giving greener retail champions, like Jake and Returnal, a chance to explain how they are helping retailers become greener businesses. Please contact editor, Ben Sillitoe, if you’d like to put yourself forward for an interview on this key subject. Sharing good practice can help the wider sector move in a positive direction.

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