KEVIN LIU, MELISSA BREI, HAILEY ESPINOSA
What was your project idea before Bootcamp
To address unsustainability in the fashion industry, we plan to create an online marketplace for sustainable fashion businesses. We will develop a sustainability standard that will educate consumers on the many different facets of sustainable fashion. We plan to implement downcycling initiatives to make our marketplace a closed-loop system. Consumers will send us their old, unwanted clothes which we will forward on to textile recyclers to turn back into raw materials. This will divert textile waste from the landfill and exportation.
How did your idea change/evolve over the course of Bootcamp?
Rather than change, we were really able to hone in on what it means to start small for our project. In our case, it was refining realistic goals and details in conducting focus groups, curating reputable bloggers, and designing a beta platform. The A3 assignment was really helpful in consolidating all of our work in one place to visualize all the processes going on and needed to happen during the anticipated summer and fall deadline.
Describe some things you learned / personal highlights of Bootcamp.
- Although we are pretty adept at navigating the library’s resources and using data visualization software, it was a really great refresher as it has been quite a while since we had used it.
- A personal highlight was the time invested in engaging with other fellow cohort students and receiving real-time feedback for each other. For example, we found a lot of overlapping interests with the group, 3 Degrees. One collaboration is finalized and underway but we anticipate many more collabs in the future.
- We learned about the importance of getting input on our project, both from the fellow teams who are also going through the same process and from the BLI Staff.
- We took the input into consideration and we believe these changes will have a positive impact on our project.
- We garnered useful contacts throughout the university that we plan on using in the future.
- A personal highlight of the bootcamp experience was the meditation during the first session. Meditation is hard to attempt independently but doing it in a group setting was empowering and helped us get in the right headspace for the rest of the day.
- A personal highlight was sharing our A3 because it showed the importance of being able to concisely explain our project and goals.
