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Pain point – people are unaware on proper ways to keep and care for plants. A drop-off service for plants that need revival.

Voting - Ruta, Jacob

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Pain point – Dog theft is a rising issue as dogs left unattended get their lead snipped. Develop a Kevlar dog lead that cannot be broken or cut to tackle this issue.

Voting - Matt, Max

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Pain point - people love some weird, unconventional smells like: freshly cut grass, petrol, chlorine but there aren't any/many candles or scents that you can buy to keep in your home.

Voting - Matt, Ruta, Liv, Max

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Pain point - throwing out loved items of clothing, not wearing some items of clothing as much, falling out of love with items of clothing, not knowing how to repair certain issues/items etc. Current services like Finesterre have long turn-around times.

Opportunity - Jump on the darning trend.

Voting - Jacob, Ruta

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CHEESE, WINE & JAM PAIRINGS SUBSCRIPTION

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CHEESE, WINE & JAM PAIRINGS SUBSCRIPTION

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Pain points around mixing and matching the 3, not knowing what pairs well with what.

Board becomes a template, complimentary cheeses and bites, random selection. Vegan and surprise cheese selection/board.

Aimed at people with some disposable income but as this is a subscription service personalised to your taste.

Voting - Ruta, Matt, Liv, Max

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Pain point – Cleaning stuff being really bulky, is there a way to make cleaning tools more compact? The cleaning wand has it all (swiss army knife style).

Voting - Matt, Jacob, Liv, Max

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Collaboration, expectations & back-up plans. 

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Collaboration, expectations & back-up plans. 

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Using the strengths, weaknesses and preferences RADAR each member of our team evaluated themselves on 4 key areas relevant to this project.

We then combined each of our evaluations to see where our weak points as a team were. We discovered that Finances and Operations is where the team generally felt the least confident.

This is why we allocated a main team member (scoring the highest) for each area.

Where necessary, the managing person can look to allocate certain tasks to other team members that have also shown preference for a certain area.

In order to ensure effective collaboration and make time available for work outside of class we made a collaborative google calendar that combines all of our individual schedules. This allows us to see free time slots for work, keep track of meetings, share meeting notes and also to issue out action items for which everyone is notified through by email.

We all have similar expectations around work ethic and have agreed to set at least one session a week (outside of timetabled workshops) to work on this Start-Up project. In the case that things don't go as planned, we keep a list of action items and notes every meeting to fall back on and delegate as and where needed.

We have also set up a Whatsapp group chat as well as a Teams group for quick updates and remote work or video calling.

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Write a post that covers:
1. Identify 3-4 (minimum) participants, who are at least one step removed from you. Avoid speaking to friends or family.

Existing repairs professionals.

General public.

Online repairs communities.

2 Participants Liv Interviewed

1 Participant Matt Interviewed

1 Participant Matt & Ruta Interviewed

3. Conduct interviews in context. You might want to record the interview, or work with a partner who can make notes while you ask questions. It's helpful if you can get portrait images of participants for your assessment presentation.

4. Identify 2/3 key insights for the business amid the general info. you've collected.

People mostly do easy and sentimental repairs themselves.

Long turnaround times.

People enjoy learning DIY clothes repair.

Sustainability trend, recycling/reusing/reselling clothes.

5. Rate your research. It's likely there were issues with recruitment, participants, questions, and analysis. Identify these issues and evaluate how reliable this 1st round of research was.

Some participants may have been biased

Our question sets were not as clear as they could've been

Issues with recruitment of the general public

6. Finally how has your hypothesis changed?

People don't care about repairing sentimental clothes that much or would rather do it themselves.

People would rather pay for repairs that they can't really do at home easily.

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Value Propositions:

We help sentimental consumers with quality and trust in repair by providing a professional repair service.

We help young professionals with worry that clothes repair is too slow and inconvenient by providing a fast online service.

Task 2

• Do some secondary research to find evidence to support your business idea.
• Post bullet points, links and images to convey key findings.

Task 2 Guidance
Use secondary research to find evidence of the business opportunity and any threats to the business.
These are some prompts, we expect you can think of others:

What is already out there? Who are the main competitor products / services both good and bad?

Are there any stand out innovative businesses, products, services related to your idea?

Market / culture / societal trends that support the idea

Statistics: Consumer spending, growth of the market or sector (Mintel / Statista)

Can you find info. that indicates the customer need or problem? Current news articles, social media content etc.

Interviewed Finesterre staff

Competitor Search - long wait times

Sustainability trend, repair/darning trend

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1. What did you want to learn?
What was the hypothesis you were testing? (See Week 3 slides for guidance)
Or which element(s) of the hypothesis were tested? Customer Segment / Problem or Need / Solution?

We tested for the need for speed & quality. As well as trying to gauge whether sentimentality was a problem/need in clothing repair.

The hypothesis that we wanted to test was that “sentimental consumers who are looking for trust and care for their clothes will pay a premium to use our service.”

We also wanted to find out more about the problem/need surrounding clothing repair

2. What did you do?
Describe the test – What were the main steps? (Show visuals of ads, landing pages, or survey questions)
Who did you target? How did you reach them? How much did you spend? How long did the test run?

A/B Instagram Test

3. What were the results?
What signals did you get back? (Show web traffic, or social media engagement metrics, email list, or survey data) How strong were these signals? What does this mean for biz direction?

We got 2 sign ups from these posts which was a pretty strong signal even though the posts themselves weren't

Impressions

Likes

Improvements

Make Instagram page more "realistic"

Too basic

Not much information

Branding

Looked dogy because it was empty.

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Estimate your costs
Next week (6) we will be assessing the viability of your current business — to get started with this you need to estimate your costs.

To estimate your costs start to gather quotes from suppliers and figures relating to:
(a) Cost of Sales – These are materials and services needed to produce your product or service

1 Seamstress

Sewing Machine

Needles

Thread

Scissors & Seamripper

Iron

Pins

Patches

Fusible web

Fabric glue

Packaging

Website

Postage

(b) Business Running Costs – These are ongoing costs seperate to sales — things like rent, IT services etc.

In this week's post you should present your initial estimate of costs as list, or table, with supplier names and any notes / calculations.

At this stage we just need some basic estimates so don't stress if your figures aren't 100% accurate – they can be refined in Week 6 workshop.

Rent

Utilities

PPC Ads

Social Media Ads

Director Salaries

To help you here are some examples for the two types of costs:
(a) Cost of Sales
Ingredients, packaging, card transactions, postage, packaging, hourly paid staff, web hosting etc.
(b) Business Running Costs
Premises costs (rent, utilities), staff costs (these are people on salaries behind the scenes), marketing costs etc.

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Understanding the numbers

1. Your reflections on the current viability of business, or lack of viability. How did the exercise change your thinking about your business?

Unit of Revenue =  1 repair
Total Cost per Unit = £22
Sales Price – Per unit of Revenue = £75
Gross Profit per unit = £53
Total Business Running Costs (per year) including at a minimum x1 £24,000 salary for x1 Director = £118,171
Total Running Costs ÷ Gross Profit = 43.27 a week.
Sales Units needed x Sales Price Per Unit = £168734.09

In the beginning we we're paying ourselves all minimum full time wage, however, as 5 directors/owners of the company we decided that in order to boost the business viability we could theoretically all work part time and rotate shifts in order to keep costs down. The new Business Viability spreadsheet looks like this:

Unit of Revenue? =  1 repair
Total Cost per Unit = £22
Sales Price – Per unit of Revenue = £75
Gross Profit per unit = £53
Total Business Running Costs (per year) including at a minimum x1 £24,000 salary for x1 Director = £34,811
Total Running Costs ÷ Gross Profit = 12.68 a week.
Sales Units needed x Sales Price Per Unit = £49438.55

If you later change the numbers significantly — you can add more sections to this post explaining the new figures and the change.

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Business Model Planning

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This week we would like you to write a post that honestly considers your group's collaboration on this project. Aim to include:

• 2/3 things that went well?

Group relations, everyone was kind, understanding and inclusive. Everyone was respectful of each other and we got on really well as a team. It was very fun!

Delegation - We stuck to the roles we delegated in the beginning based on everyone's strengths and took these into account when new tasks arose as a lot of the time other team members had to fill in for someone else when they weren't able to turn up.

Adapting to extenuating circumstances. At some points we had to work around everyone's schedules when meeting up and sometimes make last minute adjustments when something went wrong.

• 2/3 areas where things went not so well?

We couldve benefitted from more meetings outside of scheduled sessions

Organisation - ditched the calendar, group chat worked better

We could've been more rigorous with the expectations about the amount/standard of work being produced.

Do's & Don'ts

Do delegate major projects early and make to help you are keeping track of who is doing what.

Do take notes as you go on and store them so you can refer back if you need to.

Do organise time outside of sessions for research or team bonding.

Don't take on too much, make sure everyone has something to do and spread workload evenly.

Don't stick with something that's not working, adapt early on and communicate to the team when you need help.

Don't make major decisions for the team on your own, consult with everyone first.

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Lean Startup Reflection

Write a short post to reflect on the Lean Startup approach to the creative process using examples from your business development process to illustrate your main points.

Here's some questions you can use as prompts:
How is the Lean Startup approach different to your normal creative process?
What are some of the advantages of using Lean Startup to develop ideas?
What are some of the disadvantages or challenges you discovered from using Lean Startup to develop ideas?

Writing this post should help you prepare for the final presentation.

[300 words max.]

The lean start-up approach prioritises finding the shortest but most time and cost-effective way to building a viable business. In our case, this was about finding the most viable repair business model without sinking too much time and money into R&D and rather listening to the signals and moving in the warmer direction. Though we started with a business that we thought would work, we allowed the signals we were getting to form the business idea as opposed to us pushing a solution onto customers that we thought they’d like. This meant that we evolved from repairing any and every fashion piece to sentimental clothes and eventually landing on a more viable business idea that solves a real problem most people would pay to solve as they cannot/don’t want to solve it themselves.

The real advantage of equipping the lean start-up model to test your business idea is that it is the quickest and cheapest way to do that before sinking all your life’s savings in a poor investment. We did not have to hire anyone and spent very little to no money to conclude whether our repair business would float.

A disadvantage is that almost never does the MVP look like the final version of the product which raises a plethora of problems. It could be that the business idea is brilliant, but the MVP does it no justice and the product or service is completely overlooked and without the proper R&D budget can never be actualised. The opposite is also true, that maybe your MVP promises to do something radical but when the final iteration is released it doesn’t work and simply does not materialise in the real world. The signals rely heavily steered through interpretation which could be misleading.

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7950 UK adults were asked what repairs they could do by themselves. 74% said they could sew a button. 47% could darn or patch a hole. 47% could take a hem up or down. 38% could dye an item. 25% could replace a zip. 24% could redesign an item. 20% could replace a pocket. 17% could take a garment in or out. And 18% could do none of these repairs. (WRAP, 2012)

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“1 in 5 Londoners don’t feel confident mending a hole in clothing”. This survey was conducted by Censuswide with 1,003 respondents in Greater London aged 18+ and took place from 24 to 28 January 2022. (Censuswide, 2022)

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In the UK, 82% of respondents said they preferred their garment repairs to look invisible. The researchers think it’s because many people still find it socially unacceptable to wear visibly repaired clothing – it suggests financial hardship. This was a survey of 200 people from the UK. (A. Gwilt, Sheffield Hallam University, 2014)

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Patrick Grant, the host of The Great British Sewing Bee and founder of the Community Clothing label, said: “Mending in all its forms (simple sewing repairs, patching and darning) is most definitely on the rise. The web is filled with useful how-to videos on all aspects of making our clothes last longer.

“But I think this trend has been growing for several years now and I think it’s largely been driven by our desire to consume less and throw less away for environmental reasons.”

Businesses and individuals have been prompted to take action amid evidence that the fashion industry is contributing more to the climate crisis than the aviation and shipping industries combined – 10% of global emissions. If trends continue, the industry could account for a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050.

Grant said that “water pollution, soil erosion, and the mountain of plastic it leaves behind” only added to its impact.

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Trend to mend: cost of living crisis puts darning back in vogue

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John Lewis says sewing shows and eco-awareness have pushed up haberdashery sales of thread, patches and even thimbles

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Layla Sargent, the founder of The Seam – which connects skilled menders, cleaners and restorers with the public – said sales rose almost 300% year-on-year in 2022 with 70% of its sales from repairs, restoration and cleaning.

Sargent said her company was flourishing because people simply no longer have the skills to repair their clothes, particular in areas such as London with more transient populations that may be cut off from their family and local community.

Moth-hole repairs are one of The Seam’s most sought after services – with charges from £10 – and she was training additional technicians to keep up with demand.

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Trend to mend: cost of living crisis puts darning back in vogue

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John Lewis says sewing shows and eco-awareness have pushed up haberdashery sales of thread, patches and even thimbles

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In fact, a study by UK textiles charity WRAP found that 30 per cent of people have garments in their wardrobe that they no longer wear because they need to be fixed.

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Key findings

Signatories of SCAP have outperformed industry - reducing carbon, water, and waste

The amount of clothing in household residual waste has reduced by 50,000 tonnes

700,000 tonnes CO2e saved through people changing their clothing care habits

Switching to sustainable fibres offers the biggest opportunities for environmental savings

Overview

'Valuing Our Clothes: the cost of UK fashion' presents the latest research on the environmental impacts of the clothing industry in the UK, and an update on the progress and achievements of the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP) so far.

It highlights opportunities and actions that can be taken across the sector in order to meet the SCAP targets. It also sets out opportunities for the clothing sector to reduce the resource impacts of the clothing - and gain business benefits from doing so.

Contents

Key findings

Outlines the key findings from the research. It shows that SCAP signatories have reduced carbon by 10.6%, water by 13.5%, and waste across the product life cycle by 0.8%, per tonne of clothing sold since 2012.

Section A: Setting the scene

This section outlines the importance of fashion to the UK economy, highlighting how any improvements in this sector need to be part of a joined up approach to taking action.

Section B: Taking stock

How much clothing is purchased in the UK? Taking stock looks at the figures and analyses how much clothing is still in active use.

Section C: Impacts and footprints

This section pinpoints the areas of opportunity and action to improve the sustainability of clothing. It looks at how and where carbon, water, and waste impacts occur in the life cycle of garments, and analyses the changes in footprints per tonne of clothing in active use in the UK, between 2012 and 2016.

Section D: The SCAP agreement

Looks at SCAP; what the agreement entails, its targets, and how it ties in with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Section E: SCAP achievements

What has SCAP achieved since 2012? Section E covers the SCAP achievements in reducing carbon, water, and waste footprints since its inception.

Section F: Sustainable fibre choices

Significant actions have been taken by SCAP signatories to introduce more sustainable fibres to their clothing ranges. This is an achievable and measurable action which can make a real difference to the overall environmental impact of clothing. This section examines the opportunities for choosing more sustainable fibres.

Section G: Valuing our customers

Section G provides insight into action that customers are already taking to improve the environmental impact of their clothing, and highlights opportunities where they could be supported and encouraged by businesses to do more.

Section H: Meeting SCAP targets

What should SCAP signatories focus on to ensure they meet their targets? Priority products, designing for durability, helping customers to care for clothing, and resource efficient business models all offer the opportunities for business to make a difference.

Conclusions

Retailer signatories account for more than 58% of the UK clothing retail market by volume, and actions taken by those signatories are making a real difference to the sustainability of UK clothing.
To meet the SCAP targets by 2020, there are a number of areas which signatories can focus on:

Extending the life of clothes

Educating consumers

Focusing on priority products

Switching to sustainable cotton

Exploring new business models

Implementing closed loop recycling

Building further understanding of where supply chain waste arises.

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Valuing our clothes: The cost of UK fashion

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Key findings Signatories of SCAP have outperformed industry - reducing carbon, water, and waste The amount of clothing in household residual waste has reduced by 50,000 tonnes 700,000 tonnes CO2e saved through people changing their clothing care habits Switching to sustainable fibres offers the biggest opportunities for environmental savings Overview 'Valuing Our Clothes: the cost of UK fashion' presents the latest research on the environmental impacts of the clothing industry in the UK, and an