eBay UK and British Fashion Council award £100k to small businesses with circular fashion solutions
eBay UK and the British Fashion Council have confirmed the six winners of the first Circular Fashion Innovator’s Fund. The Fund will deliver £100,000 in grants to support the growth of small businesses providing more sustainable fashion solutions.
Each of the six winning businesses – including kids’ footwear brand Pip & Henry – all provide circular fashion solutions. They will receive mentoring from industry leaders as well as a £15,000 grant to accelerate their growth. An overall winner will receive an additional £10,000 grant. The six winning businesses are:
Designer of unique sustainable shoes for kids made with innovative recycled and bio-materials. The brand also provides recycling solutions and eco-educational content and stories for kids. Furthermore, the shoes grow with a growing child’s foot and cleanly disassemble into component parts for recycling.
A business linking clothing design, takeback and recycling technologies using QR technology and certification systems. This includes a credible circularity mark for retailers recognising clothing designed to be recycled into fibre.
The world’s first social network for fashion lovers to rent and lend quality items to each other. It already has over 500,000 downloads in the UK and is soon to expand to the US.
An on-demand tailoring service making clothing alterations and repairs accessible through tech. It has already completed 10,000 repairs and provides white-labelled care and repair platforms to fashion retailers, enabling brands to encourage tailoring over returns and extend the life of what they produce.
Innovator of natural dyes made from food waste, providing a commercial alternative to harmful synthetic dyes. SAGES focuses on circularity at all stages of the dyeing process to create a fully sustainable end-to-end product.
A business providing circular design and sustainable manufacturing to accompany radio frequency identification (RFID)-assisted commercial repair and upcycling of clothing.
Winners will participate in a six-week mentoring programme
This will include one-on-one sessions with business leaders from eBay and organisations including the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Plus, networking opportunities followed by financial support. The Fund also hopes to bring new technology and services to the market that can help people think and shop differently, with a particular focus on areas such as customer experience, circular inventory and services, and social commerce.
Commenting is Tim Cross, founder of Circular Textiles Foundation. “We are honoured to be recognised by eBay and the British Fashion Council as champions of circular fashion. Investing in circular practices is absolutely crucial for the transition we need to make and there is no time to lose. We all have our part to play in creating a positive future for the industry and this is an important step towards our shared goal of a circular economy for fashion.”
Also commenting is Caroline Rush, CEO of the British Fashion Council
“We are delighted to work with eBay to drive transformative, positive change by supporting entrepreneurs that are helping to deliver circular solutions for the fashion industry of tomorrow. The Circular Fashion Innovator’s Fund champions pioneers in this space, and we were incredibly impressed by the expertise, commitment and leadership demonstrated by each of our winners. We’d like to congratulate all six winners on what they have achieved so far and look forward to supporting them as they build, scale and thrive.”
Environmental charity Hubbub is supporting in an advisory role, drawing on its experience in delivering high-profile grant funds. The Fund builds on eBay’s long-standing support for the circular fashion economy. In 2021, eBay helped save over 17,770 tons of fashion items out of landfill – the equivalent of 1,404 double-decker buses.
