We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Leann Cinaglia. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Leann below.

Leann, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One thing we always find fascinating is how differently entrepreneurs think about revenue growth and cost reductions – both can be powerful ways to improve profitability. What do you spend more of your time and energy on?

Finding a balance between growing revenue and cutting costs is crucial for long-term success. It’s important to understand that the weight given to each driver can be cyclical, with a focus on one side until it is reined in before shifting attention to the other. While growing revenue may seem more exciting, it’s essential to remember that keeping costs under control is just as, if not more, important.

We recently relocated our business to a new location in an effort to cut our costs. We were renting the perfect space for our business. It had the perfect mix of office space and warehouse space. We had a loading dock and a lobby area. We had great neighbors and it was in a convenient location for our clients as well as our staff. But, it was too expensive. The rent was high but manageable but the utilities put us over the edge. We tried for a long time to make it work. We tried for a long time to grow our revenues to offset the high costs but it just was not sustainable. The stress that came with the high costs was crushing our creativity and our spirit. We were not thriving by any stretch of the imagination. So we flipped the cycle. We shifted the focus from growing revenue back to cutting costs and it immediately felt like we were given an oxygen tank. We made some internal adjustments to improve our profit margins and we moved our business to a new location that was significantly more affordable. This transition has not come without its challenges but it was amazing to experience a new burst of energy and creativity as we let go of a lot of the old expenses that were really weighing us down.

We can now shift back to a slightly more revenue focused model while keeping our costs under control.

Leann, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Our business is Always Be Recycling and we recycle electronics. We accept old, broken and unwanted electronics from homes and businesses and we keep them out of the landfill.

Reuse is always our first goal so we test all of the items we receive first to see if they are still usable or have usable parts. Then we repair, refurbish and part out what we can. All of these reusable parts are resold at our facility and online. The items that are obsolete or not reusable are disassembled and sent to a refinery for metal recovery.

Everything with a circuit board contains hazardous materials and when it is buried in a landfill it releases those toxins into the environment. Also electronics contain precious metals that can reused. Our business creates a win win win solution by keeping those toxins out of the landfill, allowing those precious metals to be reused, and giving back to the community.

Our small business has kept well over a million pounds of electronics out of the landfill so far and we are just getting started!

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

There are a couple of sales stories that stick out to me as favorites. We love all things vintage so we go to great lengths to find new homes for the old computers and electronics that come through our facility. We came across an Osborne 1 which was the first commercially successful portable computer from the 80’s. We posted in a vintage computer forum asking some questions about it and ended up meeting a professor from the University of Delaware which happened to be the alma mater of Adam Osborne who originally developed the computer. The professor was able to bring the computer back to the university in what felt like a very full circle and serendipitous scenario.

Another fun sales story was when we picked up a vintage Tandy computer from 1987 that worked perfectly and we ended up selling it on eBay to the set of Young Sheldon!

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We currently do most of our sales on eBay. We find that for the type of items we sell eBay has the best (and biggest) audience. We have plans to gradually transition our eCommerce focus to our own website but the amount of traffic we get from eBay is hard to compete with. The size of the marketplace, the ease of listing items and the shipping discounts are all pros of selling on eBay. The main drivers we have to eventually develop our own eCommerce website are to establish our own branding and to ultimately have more control over our store. We suspect it will be a long, slow and gradual transition. For now, eBay has been a great resource in helping us find new homes for our electronics and parts!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.alwaysberecycling.com/
• Instagram: @AlwaysBeRecycling
• Facebook: @alwaysberecycling
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/always-be-recycling/
• Twitter: @AlwaysBRecyclin