Pattern the Future — Redesign Helvar's Sustainable Business Model

A four-round, advanced sustainability-strategy simulation set inside Helvar Werkzeuge GmbH, a 55-year-old Stuttgart maker of professional power tools and garden equipment (EUR 280M revenue, 12% EBIT, 1,300 employees). Helvar's tools are engineered to last 15+ years, yet its 'sell more units' model quietly depends on customers replacing them every 5–7 years — a contradiction now attacked from two sides: the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and Right-to-Repair rules, and 'ToolFlow', a venture-backed tools-as-a-service rival that has already taken EUR 14M of trade accounts. The owners mandate a transformed business model that delivers measurable ecological AND social value while holding an EBIT margin floor of 10%, redesigning value creation — not bolting on a recycling bin — within an 18-month deadline and a scarce EUR 24M transition budget. Playing the Sustainability Lead, you (1) diagnose where the linear model leaks ecological and social value and what regulation renders obsolete, (2) select and combine sustainable business-model patterns from Lüdeke-Freund's 45-pattern library — leasing/product-as-a-service, take-back, remanufacturing, repair, modular long-life design, sharing/access, closed-loop materials — tagging each by value function (maintaining, unlocking, sharing), (3) redesign the value proposition, choose a coherent revenue model and allocate the EUR 24M across product redesign, reverse logistics, refurbishment capacity and a digital platform while proving EBIT ≥ 10%, and (4) defend the pitch to the owners' board and a sustainability investor. The math rewards genuine triple-bottom-line balance and pattern combinability and punishes the five classic errors: bolt-on greenwashing, untagged pattern picking, margin blindness, margin-safe tokenism, and ignoring social value. Final KPIs track Ecological Value, Social Value, EBIT Margin (against the 10% floor), and Pattern Fit.