Darwin Stephenson of Eco Toreda criticizes the secondhand device market, arguing that a lack of transparency fosters price fixing and corruption and undermines the benefits of a circular economy.
Eco Toreda bypasses middlemen by linking devices directly to resellers, offering full transparency with 400-point inspection reports.
The digital divide widens with higher costs and inventory shortages due to inefficient distribution of refurbished devices
The promise of the circular economy isn’t being blocked by a lack of innovation or availability. It’s being blocked by the supply chain itself.
The secondhand device economy isn’t broken. It’s rigged. Real access to affordable technology won’t come from patching the old system—it demands a new one.
Darwin Stephenson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Eco Toreda, a B2B/B2C connected device marketplace that prioritizes sustainability and social impact. With experience running major buyback programs, Stephenson saw firsthand how hidden middlemen, price fixing, and corruption undermine the goals of sustainable tech.
Broken supply chain: “The promise of the circular economy isn’t being blocked by a lack of innovation or availability. It’s being blocked by the supply chain itself,” says Stephenson. “While the circular economy was meant to extend the life of devices, the supply chain traps them in a cycle of markups and inefficiency.”
Devices pass from wholesaler to wholesaler, each adding a markup, a shipping cost, and another layer of opacity. Many are routed through Hong Kong, a free port with no import duties, VAT, or sales tax on electronics. From there, established smuggling networks move devices into other countries, further inflating prices and cutting legitimate retailers out of the market.
“There’s a fair amount of corruption in the industry. This ranges from money laundering to price fixing and various other nefarious activities,” explains Stephenson. “It’s so tangled, it’s like a million threads. You pull on one and you find another problem.”
No more middlemen: Stephenson connects devices directly to resellers and consumers, bypassing the middlemen who inflate costs and strip out critical inspection data. “Our vision is to streamline the reverse supply chain by selling directly to regional resellers and sharing our inspection results, eliminating the need for them to re-test and re-grade each device.” he explains.
Standardized 400-point inspection reports now travel with each device, giving resellers full transparency into functionality and cosmetic condition. “Wherever that device goes, someone could look up and find out the diagnostic information,” he says.
There’s a fair amount of corruption in the industry. This ranges from money laundering to price fixing and various other nefarious activities. It’s so tangled, it’s like a million threads. You pull on one and you find another problem.
The digital divide: In countries with the highest digital divide, refurbished devices are scarce and overpriced. Stephenson points to Guatemala, where a single refurbished iPhone 15 (128GB) was listed at $690.20 USD—nearly $100 higher than it should be, even after taxes.
Devices bought at U.S. auctions are often routed through hubs like Hong Kong or Dubai, where transparency disappears. “Buyback and trade-in is largely constrained to North America, United States, and Europe,” Stephenson says. “If you go to other countries throughout the world, like in Latin America, there aren’t these established buyback and trade-in programs.”
But the real issue isn’t lack of programs—it’s distribution. Eco Toreda offers $400 when consumers sell an iPhone 15 through its trade-in program. With standard logistics and retail margins, that phone should sell for around $500. The extra $100 likely vanishes somewhere between opaque markups, resellers, and untraceable handoffs. “I can’t point to any single phone example and say that it’s definitively caused by corruption,” Stephenson says. “But if you follow the money trail, you can definitely see that there is a problem.”
AI impact: For Stephenson, AI has transformed backend operations, turning months of product cataloging into days. “In the past, it has taken us three to four months to crawl other sites to build that product catalog,” Stephenson says. “Using AI, we did our Apple product catalog in two days.”
Yet, it still has its limitations. Cosmetic grading, for instance, still relies on human inspection. “There’s areas where AI still is in its infancy and there’s other areas where it really is moving things amazingly quickly,” says Stephenson.
