Background: The circular economy model is an essential theme in sustainable development research and a promising chance for companies to combine environmental and economic benefits. Nevertheless, a CE implementation was not realised in most companies to date.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to understand what hinders companies from becoming more circular and what measures need to be taken to initiate a CE implementation.

Method: An embedded single case study methodology serves to explore the process of initiating a CE implementation, based on a firm within the manufacturing industry.

Conclusion: Our research reveals the necessity of a pre-implementation phase before the CE implementation. The readiness of a company can be evaluated through a scoresheet that assesses the status quo. This scoresheet helps to estimate a potential urgency to achieve CE readiness. A pre-implementation sheet provides insights for firms to understand measures that need to be taken to reach readiness.