Testing our Prototype; roaming the streets of the fabric market
We were getting closer and closer to our final product but first we had to test our prototype toreal potential clients. This is when we decided to go out in the streets, reach out for stores or businesses in the area of textile use, present them our prototype and get feedback from our future customers. We needed to see if our idea had response to the market and if our potential clients would be eager to use our services.
This process was extremely stressful for us as due to the time limit we had not came in contact with anyone and we just passed by their store to present our prototype and gather feedback. There were many cases where we got turned down, as many business owners thought that we were trying to sell them something or be provided with something from them and they would not accept to discuss with us. Despite those circumstances, we kept pushing ourselves to overcome our shyness and hesitation and move on to the next store.
Fortunately we managed to talk with;
the Best, Textiles and M.K.E. Textiles which are textile businesses, as well as Antigoni Vintiadi (fashion designer), Ioannis Solomozis (interior designer), Eleni Dadioti (fashion design student at the college of central Macedonia), Manarioti Bespoke Comfort (pillow makers), Stathis Samantas (shoe designer) , Como Seta (fabric production and trade), Zooms Fabrica (Handmade Clothing Boutique), Markella Fili (Bag designer), Modistra, Vrahalis Aristidis (Fabric and Leather upholstery), Manouchehr (tailor).
After having all these conversations about our idea with professionals familiar with fabrics, who provided us with extremely helpful feedback and advice, we ended up with some conclusions.
First of all, we decided to address to larger fashion/interior brands to convince them to give us their remaining fabrics, in exchange of advertisement, and then contact smaller scale businesses to provide them with fabric materials at a lower cost.
Furthermore, as it was suggested, we decided to create a more formal and improved website which will provide the potential users with reasonable information about our idea and how the whole thing works. In this website we will categorize our products by texture, colour, amount and price in order to make the user experience as easy and comfortable as possible.
The most important thing at this stage was that throughout our research, we noticed some problems that we had missed entirely at the beginning, one of them being the copyrights. Some interior designers and fabric makers actually told us that the only thing that concerns them about our idea is that they would not want to see their designs be used by another competitor designer.
What was next was to take into consideration the feedback from every category of our potential clients and according to that, make alterations to our website so that we have our final product ready to fulfill all the needs of our target groups.
