circuly 2025 Highlights.

2025 marks five years of building circuly for brands who continue to prove that product-as-a-service is:

• Desired by their customers
• Needed for our environment
• Rapidly becoming a mainstream alternative to traditional ownership

This year, we saw subscription businesses not only grow but also mature: 

• Higher adoption
• Better unit economics
• Brands scaling from online into physical stores
• Expanding from single into multiple markets 
• New industries adopting as-a-service business models

And as more companies adopt the subscription-based business model, circuly is increasingly recognised as the essential operational infrastructure to enable such business models.

Before diving into the second half of the year, here’s a quick snapshot of what we accomplished in Q1 and Q2.

Q1 & Q2 High-level recap

• Key product milestones: Shopify App pre-launch, Apple Pay added for some payment service providers, and StoreConnect rollouts accelerating.
• Launched circuly StoreConnect - the fourth module to the circuly infrastructure that brings online subscriptions offline to brick & mortar stores. StoreConnect is now live in 75+ MisterSpex stores across Germany, enabling Mister Spex to offer subscriptions for glasses in their physical store. 
• Expanded to two new countries - bringing circuly to 19 geographies across five continents.
• Strong and steady growth: circuly’s client GMV grew 24.86% in the first half of 2025.
• More brands going circular: customer base grew 17%+, with strong momentum in electronics & Device-as-a-Service.
• Efficient scaling: ARR per employee up 18.39%, reinforcing circuly’s healthy, efficient growth.

Key product milestones: Shopify App pre-launch, Apple Pay added for some payment service providers, and StoreConnect rollouts accelerating.

Q3 & Q4 highlights to round off the year

Market & industry development

circuly supports businesses in 19 countries across five continents. 

Location expansion

While we continued to onboard new customers in markets like the Netherlands, the UK, and Sweden, Germany remains our strongest region. 

Industry Expansion

2025 broadened circuly’s industry footprint. While our core verticals, baby goods, mobility, consumer electronics, and leisure equipment, continued to grow, we also added entirely new categories. 

• Eyewear emerged as a driving subscription vertical, with Mister Spex already operating at scale on circuly, a second customer in onboarding, and more in the late-stage pipeline. 
• We also expanded our presence in the B2B space through tooling-as-a-service, significantly expanding the total addressable market for subscription-based operations powered by circuly.
• We added the biggest player in the Music Equipment Industry to our to our list of “circuly powered brands”.

Product development 

2025 was a year of meaningful product progress, with a focus on strengthening our core infrastructure. 

• Shopify App - The app enables merchants to activate subscriptions through a streamlined, lightweight version of the circuly Hub, making it easier for Shopify-first brands to test and scale product-as-a-service models within their existing eCommerce workflows.
  
  
• Customer performance dashboard - This year, we introduced the Customer Performance Dashboard, a consolidated view of how circuly-powered businesses are performing across their subscription operations. The dashboard provides a real-time snapshot of key metrics.  By centralising these insights, we’re able to react faster, identify patterns earlier, and understand how subscription brands on circuly are evolving.
  
  
• Apply pay is now available on all circuly supported payment providers - To bring subscription eCommerce closer to the seamlessness of traditional eCommerce, circuly now supports Apple Pay across all supported PSPs. This enhancement improves checkout conversion rates and supports the broader trend of customers expecting frictionless, mobile-friendly payment experiences.

Customer launches

A few of this year’s customer launches highlight circuly’s growing reach across both established and emerging subscription categories. Brands such as Swapphones, Mister Spex, Antelope, Kindami, Eddy’s Adventure, Moover, and Decathlon.

These launches reflect increasing diversity in our customer base and reinforce that circuly’s infrastructure can support a wide range of product types, operational models, and customer journeys.

Our most recent win, a forerunner in the music industry, is a strong validation of our infrastructure and vision. Their geographic footprint and strategic shift toward more service-oriented business models open many doors for circuly, both through expanded market visibility and through the momentum these companies create within their industries. 

Events, awards & visibility

circuly is increasingly being recognised as a leading voice in circular operations and subscription-based business models.

Award Recognition

We received the NRW Resource Conservation Award 2025 (Main Prize) for our contribution to circular design and resource-efficient business models,  a meaningful validation of circuly’s environmental impact.

Thought Leadership

Sophia appeared on two industry podcasts, Das Gleiche in Grün and P2S’s Products to Services,  helping expand awareness of product-as-a-service models and circuly’s role in enabling them at scale.

Industry Engagement

circuly joined the ESTAINIUM Network and participated in its member meeting in Munich. We also took part in key events, including Supply Chain × Digitization 3, IFA Berlin 2025, and Kind + Jugend 2025, strengthening our presence in both the sustainability and consumer-goods sectors.

Customer feedback & market perception 

Customer feedback this year consistently reinforced circuly’s position as a flexible and reliable infrastructure partner for subscription businesses. Across reviews and conversations, several themes emerged:

• Flexibility and adaptability — Customers highlight that circuly supports the unique nuances of their business models rather than forcing them into a rigid subscription template. This remains a key differentiator as more industries adopt circular operations.
  
  
• Partnership mindset — Brands repeatedly describe circuly as an extension of their team, valuing our responsiveness and ability to collaborate closely on operational challenges.
  
  
• Fit for diverse industries — From electronics to eyewear to tooling, customers appreciate that circuly adapts to their workflows, logistics setups, and lifecycle requirements.
  

Rather than a generic subscription tool, circuly is increasingly seen as the operational backbone that enables companies to scale product-as-a-service in ways aligned with their specific needs.

→ Check our G2 & OMR reviews.‍

Visibility on LLMs

With the rapid adoption of large language models as both research companions and search engines, circuly is investing in increasing our brand visibility across LLM platforms. We want LLMs to reflect what our customers and prospects already know and experience: circuly is the only purpose-built solution for product-as-a-service business models

• Average month-over-month traffic growth of ~36% across July–November.
• H2 goal achieved: Traffic from LLMs increased by well over 75% compared to our H1 baseline.
• Brand visibility up: Strong increase in circuly’s mentions across major LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.).
• High-intent pipeline impact: Leads generated through LLMs are converting at ~17% demonstrating early traction and strong intent from AI-discovered prospects.

We’re excited for 2026 — and look forward to sharing more milestones as we keep building the future of circular commerce together.