Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com. It's guest time on the show and I'm very pleased to have with me the Co-Founders of RecycleMatch, Brooke and Chad Farrell. Brooke and Chad, welcome to the BusinessMakers Show.

Brooke and Chad: Great. Thank you very much.

Russ: Let's start by one of you telling us about RecycleMatch.

Brooke: Well it's kind of like the eHarmony of trash. We match companies that have waste with companies that can use the raw materials.

Russ: Wow. The eHarmony of trash. That's pretty cool. Okay, now before we go too far in this, we have to kind of figure out the last name here. Both of you are Farrells. Is this a husband and wife team?

Chad: No, we're actually in-laws, so Brooke is married to my brother.

Russ: Oh my gosh. How did that happen?

Brooke: Well actually, that's kind of how the business happened. I met Chad through Brent my husband and as we kind of got to know each other, we both had a real interest in business and shared a lot of our business backgrounds with each other. And I was really interested in the business that he was in, in kind of the online marketplace side of things and I had a lot of environmental experience, and that's where this conversation kind of came about for the business idea.

Russ: Okay; and how long has RecycleMatch been in business?

Chad: We started the company in July of 2009 and really launched our prototype website we have there now in September of 2009.

Russ: Okay; and from what I understand, you're already in the business of bringing in revenue, right?

Brooke: Yeah.

Chad: Correct. We've done about 12 matches to date and have some revenue under our belts; and just continuing to acquire customers and make matches for them.

Russ: Okay. Now, the eHarmony of trash; describe that a little bit more. What kind of trash? I mean are we talking about consumers, are we talking about businesses? What is it?

Brooke: We're really talking about businesses. There's tons of stuff out there to help consumers figure out what to do with their wastes. But for companies that have large volumes of materials that aren't always kind of commoditized materials, there's really not a lot of services out there. So what we do is we help companies with the streams coming out of their manufacturing or other large volumes of materials match up with other companies that can use them.

Russ: Okay. So we're talking about specific commercial property use and items that are not your everyday thing that we see in the regular business world, right?

Chad: Correct.

Russ: What's an example of those?

Chad: Well a couple of deals that we've matched already, one is some vegetable waste for a manufacturing company that makes foods.

Russ: Vegetable wastes, okay.

Chad: Vegetable wastes, and it's about five-million pounds a year going to the landfill.

Russ: Okay, okay. So you have a customer that produces vegetable wastes and they've had to actually pay to throw it away historically, right?

Chad: Correct. It's been going to a landfill for a number of years.

Russ: Well I'm most curious about who would wanna buy vegetable waste.

Chad: Yeah, so we matched it up with a company that has a manufacturing plant that can actually turn it into natural gas -

Russ: Wow!

Chad: - so it's being shipped there. They have these big digesters, they put it in that, and it makes natural gas out of the back end of the plant.

Russ: Okay, so that is one of your successful matches, right?

Brooke: Mm-hmm.

Russ: Okay. I'm sort of curious the way that the math works. The company that had the vegetable waste, are they actually able to kind of come into your system and match it with a customer for less that they would have had to pay if they put it in the waste site?

Brooke: Absolutely, yeah. That's exactly the idea, is that right now they're paying anywhere from $30.00 to $60.00 or so to put those materials in landfill, and if we can make match, then we will charge them per ton for the materials that are being diverted.

Russ: Okay; so when you said $30.00 to $60.00, you're talking about $30.00 to $60.00 per ton.

Brooke: Right; $30.00 to $60.00 per ton is typically what landfill fees will range.

Russ: Alright, and refresh my memory. How many tons kind of was this particular customer?

Brooke: This was about 2,500 tons.

Russ: Wow; and so what percentage would they save off of that deal?

Chad: It depends on different situations with the transportation, but in this case, since the plant was a little bit farther away, they save anywhere in the range from about $15.00 to $20.00 a ton from their landfill cost.

Russ: Wow, that's significant.

Chad: Right.

Russ: Okay. But that even begs the question, well how does this pricing system work? Does the person that's actually taking on the waste, do they offer a price or do you guys recycle match in the middle? Do you say, "Okay, this is how much this is worth?"

Brooke: It's a little bit of both. I mean if the material has real value, then they will offer a price to it. But if it's something that doesn't have a ready market, you know, they may say that they'll take it for free.

Russ: Alright. (Laughter)

Chad: And they still get all the landfill savings with it -

Russ: Okay.

Chad: - and it becomes kind of a cost neutral situation from them. They save a lot of money by not having to pay to transport it and put it in the ground.

Russ: Okay. Now I find this vegetable waste product to be real interesting. What are some of the other kinds of products that are actually have been traded through RecycleMatch?

Chad: One of our first matches we actually did was with some glass windows that were coming out of a downtown skyscraper for a major oil company, and they had not been able to find a company to recycle the glass; it was going to a landfill. They contacted us, we used our website to go out, search our database, search the market for buyers, and actually made the match online with a company that can now take the glass. They crush it up and then they use it for materials that make things like glass countertops for your home.

Russ: Wow. Now Chad I'm curious. Was this broken glass from the beginning or were they real windows?

Chad: They were real windows, but when they were taking them down they were throwing them in a dumpster and so it was all crushed.

Russ: Okay; whoo!

Chad: (Laughter) And it had a little bit of film on the glass, so the normal recycling channels did not wanna touch it.

Russ: Okay. It's an interesting model you have going here. I'm curious, how do you attract customers?

Brooke: Well we use a variety of marketing tools and online is a huge part of that. Companies that are looking for a very specific item can actually Google a certain term and find that material instantly on our website just like you would if you were looking for a certain toy for your kid and you end up on Amazon. It's kind of the same idea, just for the commercial space.

Russ: Okay, right.

Chad: With the waste owners, the companies that have the waste streams, a lot of times they find us. They search on the Internet, zero waste, landfill diversion. They find RecycleMatch, they contact us, we do some sales and marketing on our own. Some of the online tools are really helping us as well, like LinkedIn. We're very active on there and companies find us and go, "This is exactly what I've been looking for," or they call us up; and we get a lot of leads through LinkedIn, Twitter, some of our blogs and other things. So it's really interesting, the difference in how you could do business on the Internet than you could ten years ago.

Russ: Okay. I'm talking with Chad and Brooke Farrell of RecycleMatch; and we'll be back with more with them after this. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com

Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com; and continuing on with the Co-Founders of RecycleMatch, Brooke and Chad Farrell. Now I'm kind of interested about how the transaction actually happens. I have this feeling that you probably don't take possession of used vegetables and vegetable oil, right?

Brooke: No. If you'd seen our office, you'd know we don't take possession of those materials. (Laughter)

Russ: Okay. So there's actually no inventory, nothing involved. You're just putting together essentially a buyer and a seller.

Brooke: Yeah, it really works a lot like eBay where, you know, it's a marketplace that connects the companies that have it with the people who want it.

Russ: Okay; and we kind of touched on this in the last segment, the pricing, sort of, scheme. Is that something that you just kind of set with the seller and hope you find a buyer or do you work with them or do you work with both sides?

Chad: Yeah. Our pricing, the way we work with is the material owners are typically paying a lot of money to put it in landfill, plus it's a branding issue for them. Nowadays, people wanna be green and environmental in almost every business you're in. So the way it works is we try and save them some money if we can by avoiding the landfill and then they also get a lot of benefits from the green side of it. And the way we charge is we charge just a match fee, a flat match fee. And then typically we charge $10.00 a ton for making the match.

Russ: Okay. Now I'm wondering do the landfills consider you a competitor now?

Brooke: Well yes and no. I mean the landfills consider us a competitor, but I think even the companies that own landfills have really recognized the value of waste diversion and that the future of the industry is really about recycling and recapturing the value of those materials.

Russ: Okay. Well, waste diversion is obviously huge these days all over the world. So I'm wondering what is your geographic reach?

Brooke: Right now we're focused in North America and really primarily the United States. There is certainly interest overseas, but we're focused on really making sure we do this well here in the US.

Russ: Okay. I would assume that there would be those that are watching what you're doing and trying to mimic and imitate your business model. Have you seen that yet?

Chad: Not yet. That's always a compliment when other people come in and watch and copy what you're doing, but we'll see how that plays out in the future. Right now, it's basically us and the online world doing the matching. We haven't seen too many other people using the space.

Russ: Okay, okay. Now you have a background sort of in a similar business, the salvage business.

Chad: Right.

Russ: Is that what sort of opened your eyes to it?

Chad: Right, yeah. I've spent the last ten years really building to online marketplaces here in Houston. One is Network International for a start of that 99 that does oil and gas equipment. And the last five years I'd spent at Salvage Sale, which is an online market for commercial salvage.

Russ: Right.

Chad: It's a lot of burned up, beat up items that don't necessarily have a market for it. So a lot of those principles and things that we learned and those tools that I use there apply very, very well with this business to help us really leverage it, get customers in, and really scale the business.

Russ: Okay; and Brooke, would it be fair to say that you were sort of an environmentally-sensitive person interested in those issues and that's what made this in-law team come together?

Brooke: Yes. I definitely would be the environmentalist in the family. (Laughter)

Russ: Okay, okay.

Brooke: But yeah, my background was really sales and marketing, but I had a lot of experience in the environmental services industry. And learned a lot about how this all works, as well as, just my passion for it.

Russ: Okay.

Chad: Yeah, I'm not the environmentalist in it, but as I started to study the problem, I couldn't believe how much material was going to a landfill. I mean I was just in shock. It's somewhere in the range according to the EPA of 214 million ton a year of commercial trash going to landfills; and so as I saw that, I'm like, "There's gotta be a better way to do this. You can use the power of the Internet to match people," because these companies just don't know each other and they don't know that they can use these materials.

Russ: Right. Well I spent a little time on your website before too and was impressed with the products where you're looking for a receiver for right now. I mean there was even like compressed plastic from drinking bottles and that, sort of thing. Is that a regular, normal project that gets traded on RecycleMatch?

Chad: We done quite a few plastic deals so far, so that is one of the kind of niche areas we've worked in, but it covers a broad range. And we've got rubber and metal mixes, we've got some chemicals on there, a lot of organic-type pieces. We've got some polyester waste on there right now that we're getting a lot of interest in, so it runs a gamut. I mean manufacturing companies and other companies have just all kinds of different materials they're trying to figure out what to do with.

Russ: What seems to be the most predominate side of a transaction? Do you have more sellers right now than buyers or does it bassolate like most markets?

Brooke: Well I think it's easier for us right now to find sellers because there's so many people that are interested in doing something, diverting that material from the landfill -

Russ: Right.

Brooke: - but there's a huge, huge universe of buyers and once they're finding the materials, they're very interested in staying in touch with us and keeping up to date with what materials are posted on the website.

Russ: Okay, I assume that you have some alerts that they can sign up and say, "I wanna know anytime, anybody puts vegetable trash on the site."

Chad: Right.

Brooke: Exactly. If you're the buyer for vegetable waste or organic waste, you can go in and very specifically identify what it is that you want; and when something hits the website, you'll get an alert.

Russ: Right. Okay, well let's just say that we have somebody that's listening right now that's really interested in either or both sides of the transactions, how would they find you

Brooke: The best way to find us is www.RecycleMatch.com.

Chad: Just go there, either our phone number or email. There's a lot of online forms you can come in and inquire either about materials; and you can post your materials directly to us as well. We have that happen a lot.

Russ: Okay. Well I really appreciate you both coming in and sharing your story.

Brooke: Great. Thank you so much Russ.

Chad: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Russ: You bet. We've been talking to the Co-Founders of RecycleMatch; that's Brooke and Chad Farrell. And you're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com.