Case study: Zeercle
How Zeercle scans over a million books a month for its buy-back platform
Zeercle is a leading buy-back platform for second-hand books and media goods, tailored specifically for booksellers.
How Zeercle’s book buy-back service works
Its fully managed solution allows retailers to offer customers the ability to sell their used books, either in-store or online, via a simple barcode scan, in exchange for gift cards fully funded by Zeercle.
The service requires no investment, no logistics effort, and no operational overhead for the partner. Zeercle takes care of the entire chain: pricing, collection, warehousing, and resale through its European distribution network.
Already trusted by major retailers such as WHSmith in the UK, Hugendubel in Germany, Mondadori in Italy and Akademibokhandeln in Sweden, Zeercle is now deployed across over 1,200 bookstores and 8 retail partners in Europe, helping them boost customer loyalty, foot traffic, and sustainability impact through a scalable, circular-economy model.
In August 2026, Zeercle was acquired by reBuy reCommerce.
Besides scanning in the store, Zeercle offers a pre-registration website for each retail partner, such as WHSmith’s. Customers scan their books at home and get a valuation before they bring them to the store.
Why Zeercle switched from Dynamsoft to STRICH
Zeercle originally used Dynamsoft’s barcode scanning SDK. With a roadmap full of new retail partnerships for the coming year, Zeercle needed a license that would grow with the business, without renegotiating every time a new partner, store or website was added.
Zeercle compared offers from several commercial barcode scanning vendors and chose STRICH, whose unlimited license covers all of its partners and scan volume at a predictable cost.
Book scanning in-store and at home with STRICH
Zeercle uses STRICH to scan more than one million barcodes every month. In the store, staff scan the books customers bring in with a smartphone or tablet, with no additional hardware required. At home, customers use the same scanning on the pre-registration website with their own phone.
Why a web app instead of a native app
Customers who want to sell a few used books are unlikely to install an app for it. With a website, they can scan their books right away. Zeercle can also offer a branded experience for each retail partner from a single code base, and in the store, staff can start scanning on any smartphone or tablet.
“Integrating STRICH has been a major success for our retail operations. Thanks to the seamless barcode scanning functionality, our staff can instantly identify and process second-hand books brought in by customers, using only a smartphone or tablet, with no additional hardware required. This plug-and-play solution has made the buyback process incredibly fast and intuitive in-store. The customer experience has greatly improved: in just a few seconds, the book is scanned, priced, and the gift card is issued, all fully funded by Zeercle. The combination of Zeercle’s robust backend platform with STRICH’s efficient scanning technology has enabled us to launch a sustainable circular service with minimal training and zero operational complexity. It’s a perfect example of how smart retail tech can be deployed at scale, with measurable impact on customer engagement and store traffic. Highly recommended.”
Eric Gagnaire, Co-founder & CEO at Zeercle
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