Circular: a marketplace for sustainable fashion

circular - fashion reborn
circular - entry point
architecture
figma preview
miro preview - produc discovery
make your dog happy by reusing old clothes ;)

Inspiration

We wanted to help small retail businesses not only to move out from pandemic, but also from global trend challenges they're facing. We wanted to bridge not only online & offline experience, but also younger & older generations

What it does

Circular is a marketplace app for finding your style and buying clothes at second hands, with the ability to customise them by craftsman's. It helps small mom&pop stores enter the digital world with no efforts, while making the younger generations look cool. It combines products with craftsmen in your area, who can fix or tailor them to your needs. And it’s all, while reducing environmentally bad fast-fashion trends.

How we built it

After narrowing down our focus into the fashion industry, we formulated research questions:

What are the problems of mom & pop stores owners and which of them is the most crucial one?
Why do mom & pop stores owners don't decide to go online?
How do global trends (also digital) influence mom & pop stores?
What kind of lessons from the big fashion industry could be applicable in mom & pop stores case?
Who is the user that trends of sustainability & social importance are important to and what are his/her needs according to fashion?

After conducting market research, we went into the field to interview Gen Z, 2nd hands and craft-people such as sewers and tailors.

When being sure we can provide a value for them, we went into coding.

Challenges we ran into

We faced three major challenges during this project, as it was hard to combine young generation needs with not-so-digitalised generation.

How might we help craftsmen with extending their professions lives to make new generations choose repairing & reusing instead of buying new clothes?
How might we make gen Z representatives to act according to their circular values to keep them inspired with new trends and at the same time explore & bold their own style?
How might we turn second hands into a provider of a specific clothes that customers currently need instead of being just a place of exploration and in their spare time?

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We've developed a solid PoC that shows our idea can be transferrable into product. Despite working over the weekends and after day to day responsibilities, we've conducted a whole product discovery. Lo-fi designs which after feedback from being tested became, hi-fi prototypes and eventually ended up as a coded solution. We've learned how to use Commercetools as a marketplace, how to use Algolia for deep-taging of images, not just for search, and we know that by using Prophet we'll be ready to predict prices.

On top of that, we're happy that we have a chance to bring a new life to the businesses of people who got stuck with thinking, that there's no hope to transfer their lifelong knowledge into the digital era

What we learned

Craftsmanship profession is dying. They have closed down dedicated schools, and in a few years there will be no one to sew in a zipper.
The city governance does not support the work of craftsmen. They prefer to rent out properties to shops / bars because they bring more money.
Young people remake a lot of things. They shop clothes in second-hands and remake them by tailors. Despite common opinion, they would like to learn how to do it themselves, but have no idea how to start.
Gen Z while being passionate in searching their own, bold style, is willing to support ethical businesses that act sustainable. They truly care about social & environmental issues thus don’t trust a fast fashion industry.
Second hands are being a place to explore clothes , not to buy a specific needed product, and because of wide assortment, it's hard to upload their products online.

What's next for us

We aim to get our product funded (either internally or by pre-seed VC) after providing a clear strategy and outcome-driven-innovation framework. We won't stop there. After adding loyalty mechanisms and polishing the base of the code, we'll be ready soon to spread the news that there's a huge gap between generations that can be crossed by using MACH technologies. Small stores and local services can find a whole new group of customers.