Is fast fashion killing all of us? Design Thinking to Build a real Start Up — Part I
How many clothes do you have in your closet? Do you use all of them every month? Or at least every year? Or most of them you are keeping just in case you have that wedding in the Bahamas and maybe you will wear it? Or in the case you lose 8 kilos and you are back to your eighteens’ body and you will use that jeans?
Fashion industry is the second most polluting industry behind oil and gas. To produce only one jeans and a t-shirt it is needed 1 kilogram of cotton which requires 20,000 litres of water and generates 8,000 different chemicals. It is estimated that 85 % of oceans contamination is due to microfiber of synthetic clothes. (Dr Mark Browne, 2017)
Every year 80 billion new clothes are consumed in the world and less than 1% of the material used to produce these clothes is reused in new textiles and fibres. (Livia Firth; Elle Mac Arthur Foundation 2017)
We only use 17% of our wardrobe. Some people even less. My dad, for an instance, uses that same shirt every time and has others 99 stopped in the closet begging for help. Isn’t time to give a second life to the clothes we are not using anymore? For our sake — organization wise — and also to do some good for the planet ? The responsibility for the future is only ours.
Second-Hand, a new beginning.
With this idea in mind I gave myself the challenge:
Using the Design Thinking Methodology I started to approach the problem with research questions to dive deep in understanding which would be the service I would provide, who would be my target audience and who would be my competition.
The research questions gave me a lot of ideas of the path I should probably follow — second hand marketplaces — and the kind of users I should be focusing on. Therefore, the applied ethnography and benchmarking should be investigated considering the world of second hand market places and looking for pain points and opportunities in this scenario.
Benchmark
Investigating deeper the atmosphere of the second hand marketplaces in a south European market it is possible to filter down to few players. Some are not clothes and accessories specifics, but due to amount of goods sold, should be considered:
It is possible to observe that only two marketplaces have the option to pick up and laundry, and both of them are exclusive for high-end fashion items: Vestiaire Collective and Rebelle.
Likewise, the marketplaces which offer the services for taking the pictures of the items, establishing a market price for the items and shipping the product to the final buyer are the marketplaces for luxury fashion: Vestiaire Collective and Rebelle.
There is no marketplace who offers the option to separate the goods for selling and what would go for donation, simplifying this task for the user. Also, there is only one that features an interaction with friends and other users: Chicfy.
Considering the specific marketplaces that sell all kind of clothes and accessories, not necessarily high-end brands, they all work only as an intermediator buyer-seller, not assuring quality of product or hygiene as well as photography at the e-commerce. They work as a do-it-yourself and are not responsible for customer satisfaction.
Another important factor to be mentioned is that from the specific and premium second hand market places that has service for pick up of goods, laundry and service of authentication, only Vestiaire Collective sells kids and men clothes, it is also the only one which has in place inventory — not for all items. Some items are sold, sent to headquarters for authentication and then to final buyer.
Thus, it is important to highlight the opportunity gap given by the competence to approach a solution that would encompass an option for donation and selling second hand, together with service of pick up and cleaning, featuring the option to chat and interact with other users and most importantly, to be able to sell or donate all kind of clothes and accessories, not only high-end brands.
Questionnaire
52% of 100 people who answered the questionnaire claimed to throw away clothes or just keep in their closet out of laziness and many suggested to second hand market places to have the option for pick up. Meeting the buyer in a place arranged by both could not be really convenient, especially if you are a seller with many goods. Some suggested the process should be done entirely online.
Additionally, in the questionnaire it was very highlighted the doubt of assurance of cleanness of goods bought in these second hand market places. If we were talking about branded products this concern could be transferred also to authenticity. Hence, the consumers are uneasy about the quality about products sold in these e-commerces in general, once the marketplace is only an intermediator and does not ensure hygiene or aspect of products, the real transaction is happening between seller and buyer.
User Personas and User Journeys
Through in depth interviews done to a millennial, who works in the fashion industry and a mother of four kids from Milan it was possible to extract many other pain points regarding displacing clothes and accessories, buying second hand and most importantly, selling second hand.
The concern about hygiene and quality of products of the products remains, which drives Maria, the millennial, to buy only accessories second hand and never online, only offline were she can see and touch the products, making sure of their good state.
The pain in leaving home to meet with the buyer remains in the case of Amanda, the mother of four kids, because she works from home and it is always difficult to make arrangements this way. Below you can see both of their User Personas and join them in their User Journey and their frustrations.
· Meet Maria
· Meet Amanda
Insights and HMW
From the pain points detected in Maria’s and Amanda’s User Journeys it is possible to extract Insights. They are a deep comprehension of the user’s needs and help in defining the question and finding the root cause of the problem. With Insights, it is possible to understand better the needs, the situation and frustrations of our personas.
With the Insights above in hands, it is now easier to turn them into How Might We questions which will generate opportunities. The ideas who will solve them will be the solution for the challenge.
Invent
Now is the best part. Get into fabricate ideas. There are many techniques to use once one has Insights and HMW in hands and a deep understanding of the problem. There is hibridationyou are familiar with if you read my article (LIBRARIES 1 LINK):
· How would Amazon approach this challenge?
· How would Spotify approach this challenge ?
Another technique used was how the new trendscould influence the challenge. Such as:
· How could this challenge be solved with Robotics?
· How could this challenge be solved with 3D printing ?
Another ideation technique used and was significative for this project was brainwriting. It consists in further develop ideas that derivate from one main idea.
And then, you can guess what happened next: A storm of good ideas! This time, I had pretty clear the ideas that would be nice and feasible for my project so instead of prioritizing my ideas with the C-box matrix for prioritization I picked the best ideas with dotmocracyand separated by area of business as below:
Value Proposition
With ideas selected, I understood which ones would be necessary to run the business and solve my users main pain points. Thus, the value proposition below was established, considering the emotional ad functional value of the service, what the users could not do before and now are able to do thanks to the features of Fashion Finder :
“FashionFinder is an app that allows the user to have his/her clothes picked up at home and a selection of what goes for donation and what goes for selling. The app has assurance of cleanness of clothes with a partner laundry. Also, it offers a community where you can put your clothes for sale inn your window and share and chat with your friends.”
Conclusion
FashionFinder fulfils the gap in the market found when analysing the benchmarking together with solving the most important pain points detected in the investigation process. A solution that would help the selection of what is for donation and what is for selling, together with a trusted service of pick up and cleaning, featuring the option to chat and interact with other users to ensure even more trust in the service and in the community and likewise, to be able to sell or donate all kind of clothes and accessories, not only high-end brands, after all our closet needs to be renewed and the clothes to have a second life, all of them.
To see the second part of this article check the link: FashionFinder Part II
This article is part of a student project and will be used to build a real start up.
