Week 1: Introduction to buisness modeling¶
1- Lecture¶
For this first week of buisness modeling, we met Emma Feriche, who studied law and buisness and is now working in a start-up accelerator and incubator focused on textile innovation and sustainability (Reimagine textile, part of technocampus and eurecat).
Innovation: Invention recognized by society as interesting and marketable. It represent a possibility of buisness.
Is there innovation in the project I am doing? If yes, then I can become entrepreneur.
If I want to lead my own project, I can do entrepreuneurship (make my own start up) or intraentrepreneurship (work on my own project but for a company).
To be an entrepreneur, one had to have some skills:
- detect problems in society, be aware of what is around you, a need or a wish (problem, needs and wishes are the 3 marketable "pains"). Find a "pain" to solve.
- empathy and put yourself in the skin of the person who needs/wants/suffers the problem
- consider the concurrence: what is our competitive advantage? Stand out !
- be motivated and keep your team motivated
- have vision, follow the trends
- have tolerance to uncertainaty. you are experimenting, so you don't know how things are going to turn out, no need to stress it out too much!
- be flexible: things change very quickly
- communication. Be seductive to investors and custommers!
- be a good planner
- commitment to the project and the people. The team must be commited together to the project
- creativity
- make a good team of people with complementary skills. Know yourself and know what you are good at, what you are lacking.
In all, you need to be a radar and know what pain my project is targeting? Am I doing an invertion only or an innovation ?
2- Who ? What ? Why ?¶
Let's apply what we learnt to my own project of
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Who? What pain am I trying to target ? This object is made for companies who whish to have better impact on the environment textile wise and want to actively act against the accumulation of textile waste in landfills. Design companies who want to incorporate sustainable materials in their designs. Example: Stella McCartney, lululemon and Adidas have all announced partnerships with Bolt Threads, the innovative fabric-makers behind Mylo. Source PureWow
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What? The product is mushroom leather grown using waste only. The mycelium is digesting the textile waste, coffee grounds and food waste.
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Why? Because textile waste is accumulating in landfills due to overconsumption. We have to find a way to put them in a circular economy with a C2C approach.
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Potential competitors?
Mycelium leather producers
| Name | Concept |
|---|---|
| Mycoworks | USA. 60 patents. Their products have been used by Hermès. |
| MOGU | Mycelium company for arquitecture (floors, wall panels). Offer a service of recovering your waste and biodegrading it. Based in Italy. |
| Ecovative | Mycelium materials company, very polyvalent (foam, leather, packaging, food, beauty, for all fashion, packaging and automobile industry). Very technical, biological engineering and research to make better mycelium materials. Based in San Fransico. |
| MycoTex | Uprising mycelium textiles company, with only projects but no product yet. Based in Belgium. |
| BoltThreads | Stella McCartney, lululemon and Adidas have all announced partnerships with Bolt Threads, the innovative fabric-makers behind Mylo. Mercedes-Benz and Bentley are also on board with the eco-friendly materials and have begun making mushroom leather car seats in some new models. |
| Mycotech | Mycelium leather company based in Indonesia. More natural growing process and more natural look. |
Other leather substitutes producers
| Name | Concept |
|---|---|
| ZOA by Modern Meadow | Zoa™, launched by Modern Meadow, is the world’s first bio-leather material brand. Able to be any density. Hold to any mold. Create any shape. Take on any texture. Combine with any other material. Be any size, seamlessly. A liquid. A solid. An anomaly. Grown with the intention for making things of real value, that exist not just to serve humans, but to co-exist with everything. |
| PiñaTex | Leather made out of pineapple leaf waste from the Philippines. Fibers are extracted from the leaves and then used to create a non-woven. Created by London-based company Ananas Anam, it is the most affordable, plant-based leather option and has appeared in hundreds of products, including those made by Hugo Boss. Existing versions are coated with a synthetic material to give it the leather-like look, though Ananas Anam says it’s working on a biodegradable alternative. Another drawback is its texture is similar to crinkled cardboard, which can turn off designers. |
| Frumat | Apple leather combining waste from processing apples in the Italian Alps with PU. Used to make sneakers by the brand Womsh and bag brand LaBante. Twice as expensive as animal leather for the moment. |
| Mirum | Created by Natural Fiber Welding, Illinois, the startup uses natural ingredients such as waste cork, hemp, coconut and vegetable oil to create biodegradable composites. The fibrous mixtures are compressed with a mould to create the pattern and texture of leather. Brands can even send patterned textiles to Natural Fiber Welding to be turned into customised, leather-like products. |
| CUSO | Salmon leather, salmon skins that are wastes are revalorized and used for the making of jewelery and others. The leather looks like snake leather. |
| Desserto | Cactus leather. Vegan. Cactus are shredded and then a pulp is casted. |
Source: Vogue. Modern Meadow growing cow leather without cows