There is no shortage of waste in the world. It is estimated humans dump more than 2 billion tons of waste every year, overwhelming landfills, suffocating oceans, polluting the earth. Homes and farms create much of it, with manufacturing another major contributor.
According to a startling statistic from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1/3 of all food produced is lost or wasted each year with losses coming from every step in the supply chain. And that’s just food.
From pharmaceuticals to pet food it occurs in every industry. But waste doesn’t necessarily mean trash and even the savviest, best-run companies can generate it.
“Waste is just as much the result of market pressures and changing trends as it is production and planning issues,” explains innovator Tim Intfen, who started a company to prevent and repurpose materials that could otherwise go by the wayside.
Instead of letting leftover products collect dust on warehouse shelves or wind up being dumped in landfills, Intfen came up with a novel way to capture waste before it actually becomes waste. As President and Co-Founder of inField Market, Intfen’s idea is akin to a dating site for lonely inventory. In essence, fixing up businesses that need certain materials with businesses that have those leftover materials, and making the introduction through the website infieldmarket.com/.
“Most of this waste isn’t really waste at all,” explains Intfen. “A lot of it is material that’s out of spec, but still perfectly consumable or it’s still hanging around the warehouse because a customer’s plans changed and now the company is stuck with it.”
inField Market aims to create a “sharing” business culture to connect one company’s excess materials into useful resources for another, saving businesses money and significantly reducing the human footprint on our planet.
“We are essentially the AirBnB of raw materials, letting businesses sell off their excess and buy other goods at competitive prices,” said Intfen. “We’ve seen a lot of these consumables cross over into industries such as sports nutrition, Kombucha production, distilling, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products, and even animal feed.”
inField Market’s new business-to-business eCommerce platform takes advantage of the latest technology and a rapidly shrinking global stage, to help businesses connect with one another.
“There is a need to move and repurpose these valuable nutrients and gain visibility to all that is available on the market,” said Intfen. He adds up until now there hadn’t been a tangible way to get extra inventory in front of the right buyer.
The platform works like this. A company with a leftover ingredient like Omega-3 fish oil can log on to the platform and list what they have to sell, how much of it is on hand and at what price. A company that needs the ingredient simply clicks on what they are looking for and connects, often picking up the item at a discount. InField Market shows real-time inventory and helps the two businesses make a connection they might never have made in the complicated world.
“Challenges of selling quality ingredients have become more complex due to an increasingly crowded space,” explained Intfen. “It becomes difficult for buyers and sellers alike to maintain visibility and ultimately relationships between the companies and individuals within the supply chain. To further complicate this, we don’t always know the issues facing one another on a daily basis.
The platform is accessible 24/7 from any device giving users a real-time look at the hundreds of different raw materials, bulk finished goods and packaging materials that are currently available.
Buyers can also specify the particulars of what they need. If they are looking for products without GMOs, gluten or phthalates, they can make that selection. They can also choose from USP, organic, human grade or animal grade ingredients. inField Market aims to make it easy for customers to find where the materials are sourced from and exactly what they contain. Customers can sample before they buy so they’re confident the quality is what they need.
Intfen’s background in global raw materials distribution combined with his passion for reducing waste and offering opportunity set the perfect stage for inField Market’s launch in 2017.
“Over the past 14 years, I have been able to work with and for some great minds in an industry that is one of the most exciting, creative and necessary fields. Entrepreneurialism is paramount to breeding innovation, new markets and new ways of doing business and is embodied on labels of every bag of dog food, ice cream, cold brew, multi-vitamin and face moisturizer that we see.”
Intfen sees big things for his growing company. By reducing business waste he’s helping disparate businesses around the globe speak the same language while saving companies money and throwing a lifeline to Mother Earth.
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