Judge's Choice: Shinely | Upcycling and re-designing old clothes for re-sale to avoid clothes wastage and help refugees.

What is the problem you found?

Too many clothes end up in landfill. Even when people donate their clothes to op shops, there are many items that don't sell. These items also often end up in landfill. 

What is your opportunity?

Our problem statement is: How might we recycle old clothing to reduce the amount of clothes waste in our community? 

Who is your audience?

Our customers are:

1. Young people and adults wanting to get rid of some of their excess or old clothing

2. Young people and adults who want to buy new clothing without increasing their environmental impact 

3. Afghan refugees who need work and financial support 

What Is Your Solution?

We will run a social enterprise called Shinely. We will use our sewing skills to create a service where we re-design clothing so it can be upcycled. Clothing that is donated to us can be given a second life. We will take clothing and custom make new designs and use that to upcycle the clothing. Some of our profits will go towards helping Afghan refugees like us. 

You can see an image of our prototype below, where we have tie-dyed a shirt and added our logo to it to upcycle it from just being a plain shirt the owner wasn't wearing to something we can sell. We got some great feedback from showing this to our teachers and other students at the school.

Support Required

Advice

We would love the chance to grow our idea and need some advice to help us do that. If we can meet mentors we think they could support us in many ways; emotionally and business wise.