Henning Gillberg - Sweden’s Second Hand Profile 2020

Monday, November 25, 2019. There are five days left to this year's absolute shopping festival and in the mall at Hornstull in Stockholm, it is being prepared with signs and offers that will maximize the customers' spontaneous shopping craving.

This year's Black Friday will see Swedes' shopping profits reach new heights - over seven billion Swedish kronor (SEK). But Henning Gillberg doesn't know that yet, as he stands in black trousers, white shirt and white jacket, looking out over the circular pop-up shop that has taken up residence in the mall for the day. What he has just learned, however, makes him touch his forehead and say frankly:

- I actually get a little teary-eyed.

Breathing.

- Ikea is in! Ikea is skipping Black Friday and has put White Monday on its homepage. Wow!

Five hours later, in a (fittingly) white conference room a couple of floors up, American enthusiasm pours out of the laptop's speakers. "WITH US TODAY WE HAVE HENNING GILLBERG FROM SWEDEN - THE FOOOOOUNDER OF WHITE MONDAY!"

Live on Facebook, Henning Gillberg talks to a US-based courier company about the ideas behind the White Monday concept and offers tips on how they can continue to spread the movement "over there". Two weeks ago, he was in Singapore to launch the concept. Positive reports are coming in from there, as well as from Germany, Serbia, Kenya, Turkey, Canada...

- The first year we had 30 participants, the second year 180. This year we are over 500 participants from 23 countries. There is a greater calm in me now, because outside of me there is now a movement that is not dependent on me as a person. White Monday has gone from being something that the media thinks is a bit of fun to highlight, to really becoming a movement among the people. And only then can we make a real difference.

Three years have passed since Henning Gillberg, together with a colleague at the time, formulated the concept of White Monday. As a kind of counterpoint to the unsustainable consumerism that Black Friday as a concept stands for, he felt a clear need to point to a different way of consuming. At the time, as now, he was the CEO of his own Corporate Repamera, whose business idea is to patch and repair customers' broken clothes. His experience was that many customers did not know that it is possible to consume in a circular way, that is, to make use of what already exists. Either by patching and repairing, buying second-hand, buying goods made from recycled materials or renting goods instead of buying.

- White Monday's core message is to showcase an alternative to new consumption. We're not saying don't consume at all or never buy anything new. But we do need to find the balance between new innovation and making the most of what we already have. Do you really need to buy a drill to drill a hole in the wall or is it enough to rent one for a few hours, drill your hole and then return it? If your pants break, do you really need to throw them away and buy a new pair, or can you mend them and keep using them?

The first step was to mobilize Corporate circular economy stakeholders and provide them with a common platform from which they could become a stronger voice and show customers clear alternatives. In addition, organisations, associations and, not least, influencers made the movement visible on social media by actively promoting its message.

- We make the average person understand the difference between new consumption and circular consumption and in that way I think we make a difference. It is when we activate consumers that change happens," says Henning Gillberg.

So where does his own commitment to the issue come from? He finds it difficult to substantiate it in words, he says. Perhaps his simple upbringing in Lenhovda in the deepest forests of Småland, with two part-time nurses as parents and many siblings, played a role in his view of the importance of material things? Maybe it's the entrepreneurial spirit that led him to first study product design and circular economy at Malmö University and then to start Repamera, the company where he initially cycled around the streets of Malmö to pick up his customers' clothes in need of repair?

What is clear is that he is passionate about sustainability - but that the last thing he wants is to become a trendy campaigner for the same.

- My main job is to get everyone who participates in White Monday to not make it a sustainability campaign. We want to get everyone to start thinking and consuming in a circular way, it's good for all parties and also for Mother Earth. If you say it's a sustainability campaign, I think you only capture the target group that already thinks about these issues. We want to get everyone thinking circularly, whether you vote left or right, whether you are angry or happy, stupid or kind, tall or short. It's good for everyone and for Mother Earth.

MOTIVATION SWEDEN SECOND HAND PROFILE 2020

Year after year, commercial retailers shout their message with a force that makes us buy billions of Swedish kronor (SEK) worth of new products - and that's just for one day. What started as a witty play on words has now established itself as a growing counter-movement that engages everyone from private individuals and influencers to organisations and Corporate - in Sweden but also internationally.
As the founder of White Monday, Sweden’s Second Hand Profile 2020 has with great commitment created a powerful movement that drives the important development towards a more circular consumption. A movement that is undoubtedly the new black.