Advancing Circularity and Sustainability with Grant Hoffman

I am Bonnie Schneider, and today we have a great interview. I'm excited to introduce you two. Uh, we're gonna be talking to Grant Hoffman, who's the senior Vice President and general manager of Renewed solutions at hp.

Grant, it's great to have you here. Thank you so much, Bonnie. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. Well, Greg, can you share a little bit about your background and your position? Sure, absolutely.

So, uh, first of all, thanks to your audience for spending a few minutes here, but, uh, again, my name's Grant Hoffman. I joined HP in 2022 via the acquisition that HP made of a company called Poly. So I was at a company called Poly, uh, where I was managing the supply chain.

So prior to HP and prior to Poly, I worked in a variety of companies in CPG automotive, uh, mobile phones for companies like Continental ag, Motorola, Google, and Lenovo, just to maybe name a few. Um, but the sum is, is Dave Shoal. He hired me at Poly, where he was the CEO, and he was my boss.

And then Dave transitioned to HP where he took over the position of president of HP's workforce solutions business. So as I was transitioning the global poly supply chain into the very professional and wonderful HP supply chain, uh, Dave approached me and said, Hey, grant, let's build a business that's fully aligned with HP's strategy of being the most just and sustainable tech company experiencing explosive growth through basically the customer's focus related to circular devices. We'll take all of the goodness of HP from the different factory partners will offer flexible solutions from transactional to manage, which managed solutions, which HP does already today will basically reset how the world thinks of second life devices.

You have businesses called Renew Solutions. Thanks for the explanation. That's wonderful.

Well, for our audience, you know, it's very, uh, tech savvy. I'm not sure everyone is familiar with the, the definition of circularity. I know that's a big context for hp.

Can you explain it? Yeah, very good. Uh, circularity means a lot of things to a lot of different people.

And for Renew Solutions specifically to the business that, that I'm working on, we basically have three different sections within our business. The first one is hardware. So we have a hardware business that takes both transactional and managed motions, and we basically go and find units that are unfinished goods.

We refurbish those, bring them back to like new, and then we sell them either in the channel or we sell them direct or we sell 'em through a variety of different motions. Then we also do services, which is also circular, where it's called device recovery service. So if you're an HP customer and you have units that you would like to move along, maybe you've got some sit in your closet or you just have some old devices, you can absolutely send us a list.

We'll send you the value for those devices, and then you send them back. And then we take care of those devices. We also have programs, so this is the third business inside of Renew, and we'll talk about this a little bit later, but we have a very exciting program called the HP Certified Refurbished Licensing Program.

And basically for that one is we support IADs and refurbished units that meet our quality standards. So these are folks that do their own refurbishment. It's a very large industry today.

If they meet HP's quality standards, we'll back them with an HP warranty. And basically it gives peace of mind to our customers and definitely protects our brand over on the circular market. So bringing it kind of full circle, so to speak, back into each of these categories, renew solutions, whether it's the hardware category, whether it's the services or programs for us, for us, each of these are taking HP devices all the way from new, all the way through the end of life.

So for us new sales all the way through EOL, that's the way we're supporting circularity. That's great. Now, I know you have an ambitious goal for 2030.

It sounds like you're well on your way to achieving it, but can you explain that? Yes, very, very true. So yeah, 75% circular, uh, circularity by 2030.

And so, uh, before Renew Solutions was announced, which was just less than a year ago, HP had been on this journey and done some absolutely amazing things. And they continue to do, and that's everything from ensuring like paper-based packaging or derived from recycled or certified sources. We have everything from reducing the single use plastic packaging.

Uh, we're also increasing the overall recycled plastic in the devices just to name a few. Then Renew Solutions comes into the mix. We're just kind of, uh, launching globally as we speak, and we're in a couple of countries and we'll be a lot more in the near future, but for us now, renew Solutions joins this, uh, objective to get to 75%.

And for us, we're supporting everything from PCs and printers and hybrid gear. So it's a variety of devices with inside of hp. And so the Renew Solutions team is absolutely so excited, and we absolutely 100% are gonna make the world a better place for future generations.

That's, that's wonderful. And you know, I think most tech companies have, um, reducing electronic waste on their mind, on their agenda, but I'd like you to take a deeper dive into the refurbishment process and how h HP address that. Sure, yeah, very good.

Uh, so maybe just a little operational, but hopefully, uh, your viewers will find this useful for us today. hp first thing we have to do is we have to go find devices. And so we have a lot of customers, we have a lot of partners, we have a lot of channels that we have the opportunity to go, uh, globally and recover our HP gear.

Some are looking to trade in or to trade up, and there's a variety of ways that we can go secure devices. And so it's important because each country has specific requirements. Each customer's a little different.

So step one is basically going to find these units, uh, in the marketplace. And again, this is printers, this is PC and it, and it's hybrid gear. And then we'll take this gear and we'll move it to, we'll call it a qualified refurbishing partner.

Many of these partners are the ones that we work with today to build devices or, um, uh, work on warranty of repair of HP devices today. So a lot of these are the same folks that we work with. And so for us, we try to keep these units in region, and for us it's just less movement means less carbon when you're transporting the unit.

So when they arrive at the factory before they go through that, we do this very exhaustive, uh, performance and evaluation test. We look at everything for battery life, we look at scratches on the screen, any kind of cosmetic issues we have, just to name a few. And so once the partner brings this life back to a like new state, we then market it with our, just alongside of our new devices, whether it be through channel or direct customers.

And our wonderful sales team has the opportunity to sell a renewed device along with, uh, package devices, uh, with new and refurbished combined. How do you handle the challenge of maintaining security through this process? It's a very good question.

Uh, the beauty of HP is we have been, uh, for decades have basically been able to do, uh, returns, repair of devices, and then send them back to customers. And so this is something that, uh, HP has been doing for many, many years, and we're using many of the same partners and the same exact processes that HP has followed for all these decades. Whether you have a break fix or you have a unit that needs to be repaired, you send it back, we can track that unit and we take care of it and make sure it comes back to you and has the same, we'll call it, uh, security and, and knowledge knowing that HP took care of that device while it was, uh, you know, being refurbished.

We followed those same practices today. So again, lucky to have the heritage of hp, the heritage of our supply chain capabilities, making sure that the security of those devices are maintained in the integrity of those all the way from start to finish. We talked about circularity.

I'm wondering what other innovations and sustainability and initiatives that you're working on that you're excited about. Yeah, very good. Um, you know, for me, uh, you know, HP works hard to basically achieve the goal to be the most justice sustainable tech company.

I mentioned that a little bit earlier. For me, this isn't just a statement. I mean, HP has been a recognized leader in circularity and sustainability for many years, and you combine this commitment to a better world with customers increasing demand for circular devices, and your viewers, you know, can, can look up these statistics, but it's growing at a very large rate.

And for me, you take this idea of HP's, um, goal of being the most justice sustainable with this growing requirement for circular devices. And we have a winning combination. But for me, there's, you know, specifically there's three things that I'm most excited about.

One I mentioned is this, I, uh, this plan or this program we have called the HP Certified Licensing Program. And again, this is where HP backs the I 10 and Refurbishers unit. It meets our quality standards, and then we back it up with an HP warranty.

And for us, we believe this is gonna give customers, you know, the buying confidence that they need to buy a refurbished device with an HP logo, iron Second is scaling globally. Uh, for me it's a, it's a challenge. Every country seems to have different regulations and different requirements.

And so when I think of the innovation or things that are excited for me, it's, it's making sure that wherever HP sells a new unit, we can also offer a refurbished unit. Our customers are global, they're very big customers. What you can think of all your large enterprise, your glo, your global Fortune one thousands, and they're asking for units to be, um, initiated globally, not just specific to one country.

So scaling globally for us is, uh, is a challenge that we have on the horizon. And then for me, lastly, I'm really excited the fact that this isn't just one segment of HP's business, it's truly across the portfolio of hardware that HP offers. Again, I came from Poly, so I'm very kind of biased in the fact that, you know, poly will be a part of this program.

We have PCs, we have printers. So it truly is, uh, across the, the breadth of our portfolio. So the licensing program, scalability globally, and then making sure we cover the whole portfolio of HP all exciting things for being in the future.

Excellent. Uh, what would you advise others that are maybe not in the same business as hp, but they're in tech and they're looking to be more sustainable in their practices? Yeah, sure.

Uh, for me, and it's, it is a beautiful thing that started decades ago with hp and to me it starts with culture. It really does. When Renew Solutions was announced, um, the amount of positive feedback and the amount of emails and phone calls and teams messages that I got was just outstanding.

And it is truly built into the fabric of hp, again, wanting to be the most just and sustainable tech company. So for me, like building the sustainability mindset into the fabric of your organization, similar to what HP does for me, that's the what we, what is, is most required because, uh, even when it's not easy, you want your organization to do the right thing. And very proud to work for hp.

'cause it absolutely is built into the fabric of our company. It that's absolutely true. And it, it was really interesting, uh, speaking with you Grant, I learned a lot about circularity and what HP is doing.

Sounds like terrific initiatives. We're very glad that you had the opportunity to join us on Techstrong tv. Excellent.

Thank you Bonnie. I appreciate your time. My pleasure.

Well stay with us on Techstrong tv. We're going to have a lot more interviews like this coming up.