Matease : a new platform to choose and buy materials
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One year ago I decided to take part in FED in Copenhagen. My main motivation for doing so was to be able to meet people from Designit, as it was one of the workshops proposed during the program. It led me to attend many meetings about entrepreneurship. I had to swallow my pride as I am really annoyed by the hype and overvaluation around start-ups and entrepreneurship. So yeah, sorry for being schizophrenic!
That being said, this program had some genuinely interesting talks, including the one from Designit and vertical strategy. But first and foremost, it allowed me to meet three bright minds (Shamail, Alexander and Lasse) with whom I created an idea that won two start-up competitions in a row: the jury and audience prize during the FED start-up weekend, and the winner in idea stage at Start-up Denmark.
The idea
Imagine you are a designer and you want to make something new, let say a new coffee machine. Of course, you would like to know what materials are fit for this object, what are the cheapest, most sustainable ones, but that meet the requirements of your product. But how do you know which one to choose? At the moment you have two alternatives:
Our product, Matease, aims at bridging the gap between the designer’s needs and the current solutions. Consumer products have their Amazon and Alibaba, while material sourcing keeps being a black box, with a total lack of information about suppliers, sustainability, properties, etc…
Our deck
A low fi prototype
Sketch/ Invision prototype:
And our first online prototype, used to get some real feedback and a genuine feel of the designers’ process:
http://matease.dk/
Both trends in local manufacturing and the growth of the maker movement make a product like this important.
It would allow companies to conduct a material audit of their current products to make sure they are as up to date and as sustainable as possible.
Like 99% of start-ups, circumstances made a continuous commitment to this idea impossible. I moved to Brussels and worked on other projects. I still think that such an idea has potential, and I would be happy to see it developed. It is also still on my list, though unfortunately it is low enough so it’ll be a while before it’s done.
Thinking about it, my luck was to be in such a good team with a material scientist, a mechanical engineer and a business specialist. I think the absence of a back-end developer made it hard to access the next stage for us.
