ReFab; our journey to the startup world

Five girls with one common vision about a sustainable world. This is how we teamed up on the course of AD Discovery and Creativity Lab and undertook the creation of our own startup.

In order to start this process, the first thing we had to do was to find out what our vision would be. Inspired by a documentary we decided that we wanted to create an environmental-friendly startup that would promote a sustainable way of living and after doing some research we concluded to creating a fabric- recycling startup company called ReFab.

After that, it was important to be informed about our competitors and to know what other similar startups are out in the market. This would help us to find a way to stand out from the rest of the other similar startups.

In order to bring our idea to life, our next step was to follow the 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process ( Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test). Throughout all of this process we had in mind that our main problem to solve through our startup was textile waste.

“Empathizing” was a unique experience for us as it was the first time that we had to communicate and spend time with experts and professionals in the field of fabric use in order to understand in depth their needs and problems.

A rather interesting and groundbreaking stage for us was that of “defining the problem” as we realised we needed to focus on a different aspect than the one we had initially thought.

“Ideating” was a challenging experience but crucial for our next step. During this stage we decided how we were going to design our upcoming platform.

Building our own website from scratch for our first “prototype” was very confusing and time-consuming, as none of us had any specialized experience in such thing, but of course, as we did in the rest of the stages, we made it. We managed to create a website as close to the one we had in mind, ready for testing.

“Testing” our prototype and getting feedback from professionals for a second time by going out to the streets and searching for potential clients was definitely the most difficult process out of all but at the same time the most important one, as it got us even closer to our final product.

After that what was left was to analyze all the feedback we received and make the right alterations in order to perfect our final website.

Lastly in order to complete our experience in the world of startups, in one of our meetings at the Lab we created a ‘World Cafe’ environment, where we exchanged tables and met different other startup teams, with which we communicated and exchanged ideas and advice through the method of ‘speed dating for startups’.

Our first journey in the startup world through the AD Discovery and Creativity Lab was overall an extremely challenging yet remarkable experience and now we can say for sure that we are equipped with the right tools to continue our journey in the marketing area and (why not?) even launch our startup in the market in the near future.

We are ReFab and we believe in a sustainable way of living. Let’s make rag the new fab!

Vivi Kardatos Angelika Bega Maritina Filiou vana pan Betty Tsakarestou