Consciente

A digital marketplace that brings together a community interested in sustainable clothing

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Inspiration

The fast fashion industry is the second-largest polluter in the world, just after the oil industry. The fashion industry produces “10% of global carbon emissions every year and is estimated to use around 1.5 trillion litres of water annually”. Such a statistic demonstrates the serious impact of the fast fashion industry on the natural environment. Although fast fashion makes clothes more affordable for individuals, it carries a significant environmental burden. For instance, an average T-shirt itself produces over 2.6 kg of carbon emissions, and a pair of jeans releases 11.5 kg of carbon dioxide. People have been looking for ways to protect the environment and build a sustainable ecosystem; one such way is to purchase sustainable clothes i.e. slow fashion. To add on, several companies do not offer customers a guarantee that the products they purchase will be sustainable. They also do not offer a community platform where people can interact with each other; seek and share information.

What it does

The market is looking for a company that provides the customer with high-quality, affordable, easily accessible sustainable clothing. The solution Consciente provides users is a web-based platform and eventually a mobile application that will be available on major operating systems like iOS and Android.

Consciente is an online marketplace where users can buy sustainable clothing from various brands that Consciente partners with. Consciente will follow a traditional e-commerce layout with earthy undertones as our colour palette. Consciente is committed to partnering with sustainable clothing businesses and will feature various products which can be filtered by price, size, and estimated delivery time. The platform will also feature user reviews and AI-powered recommendations for users based on their preferences and search history on the platform, which will allow them to find their preferred products easily. The Consciente platform will have a fourteen-day policy for buyers, aka customers, to try and return products if they face problems. Additionally, the platform will follow AODA compliances like the provision of big text, contrasting colours, and alternative text for images. To ensure everyone can have access to the platform.

Consciente intends to earn its revenue through 4 different streams:

  1. Vendors: They pay a subscription fee after the first few months to continue selling their products on our platform. This will be a recurring fee they can either choose to pay annually or monthly. Additionally, if they require additional services from Consciente they would have to pay a slightly higher fee.

  2. Customers: These are people aged 15 - 40 years old and interested in making sustainable life choices, whether it’s because of low prices or the desire for a switch to sustainable practices. We take a flat 7% commission from individual sales of the products.

  3. Community: Like minded individuals will sign up to be community members who will pay a minimal fee of $2 to access educational content, blog posts, exclusive products and offers, and the online thrift store through our community platform.

  4. Ad network: For all the brands that use the ad network, the website and mobile app will have empty ad space to run ads by sustainable brands and organizations. In the future, we would also give brands on our platform the option to show up at the top of the shopping page by running paid ads.

How we built it

• Front end - React (using a specific framework called Gatsby), to make loading times faster for the website • Back end - Flask (framework written in Python) server to handle our API calls • Database - Firebase, to store and sync data in real-time • Credit Payment Authorization - Stripe API, used to keep track of payments and customers • User Interface Architecture - Figma and Balsamiq

Challenges we ran into

• Online collaboration between multiple team members all of whom have diverse backgrounds and skills • Time management (as we only had 24 hours)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• In a 24 hour time period, we were able to create a major business plan for a sustainability-based business, develop the information architecture and wire frames for a web-based and app-based application, and develop a presentation!

What we learned

• Project management; Digital cross-platform collaboration; Figma; Balsamiq; Presentation skills; Business model analysis; skills to write, present, and critique business pitches and business plans;

What's next for Consciente

Although Consciente is currently at the development stage, it will initially launch as the web-based platform. Our plans for our first web-based version will increase the accessibility as the potential customers can reach from various devices. Moreover, due to the financial constraints at the initial stage, the web-based application will provide the solution in reducing app maintenance, update, and developing cost. However, as Consciente begins to take its shape in the market, we will slowly begin the application launch process that will be accessible through Apple App store and Google Play store. The funds acquired from the subscription fee and the revenue from advertisement will be distributed into the application development as well as for the market expansion initiatives. For instance, the market research and vendor acquisition in the expanding markets will be another key milestone to ensure the survivability of Consciente.

We aim that the first version will be developed and launched by January 2022 and during this period the vendor acquisition will be completed by September 2021. The marketing on social media and other e-commerce sites will begin by October or November of 2021. The timelines for further initiatives will be adjusted once the launch is complete and we obtain sufficient data to make projections and decide on the most appropriate dates. A final thing to add is that the members will be compensated through equity and will not be monetarily compensated for the first 18 months. The equity is the only initiative and the team will initially work part time while transitioning to full time roles with growth. We plan on making Consiente the biggest player in the sustainable fashion industry by working on the strategies and plans outlined above.

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