Climate Launchpad is the world’s biggest green business ideas competition hosted by Climate-KIC. I was lucky enough to be selected to compete in the state pitch competition and bootcamp for QLD. I was joined by my husband who is a software engineer.

This project has been on hold while I study but it’s an idea I would be interested in taking further in 2022.

Rent Vintage Wisdom is an Online Leasing Platform where Vintage Stores can list their special occasion garments for an audience of Retro Loving Gen Z’s to rent. Garments rent for a fixed price of $90. When rented, 9% of the fixed price is deducted in exchange for using the platform.

In Australia’s capital cities there are approximately 319 Vintage stores. With the gentrification of vintage clothing driving down profit margins, stores are looking for new ways to generate revenue.

16 to 24 year olds have embraced secondhand and vintage. Re-sale platform DePop says 75% of this group are buying secondhand regularly, motivated by sustainability and affordability. In Australia that’s 1, 687, 500 potential users.

The average cost of buying a vintage or new garment for special occasions is around $250. By renting a garment for $90, financially conscious Gen Z customers are saving 64%.

Vintage Stores stand to increase their return on investment by 800% if they can rent that same garment out 15 times a year, or approximately every 3.5 weeks.

Our product is an online platform for leasing vintage garments. Stores can list to a large customer base, assisted by our inventory management tools; only paying for the service when they make a profit.

Gen Z has access to curated, one-of-a-kind, special occasion garments, without the responsibility of cleaning them.

Our competitive advantage is our ability to execute quickly and effectively with a team whose expertise sits at the intersection of fashion and technology.

We assumed single wear consumption and buying fast fashion was prevalent amongst Gen Z. Instead we found they were incredibly hesitant to buy something unless they knew they would get multiple wears out of it. This led to a lack of special occasion wear.

We believed Gen Z had a desire to wear unique vintage outfits. Interestingly 80% are actively resisting fast fashion trends by wearing garments from the 60s to 90s. Their outfits were an expression of their identity, which is fluid and still developing, and all regretted past purchases that didn’t align with their current identity.

We thought Vintage Stores would be interested in new revenue streams. Both store owners interviewed tried markets, online resale and  brick and mortar. One was already renting out garments with success but faced a barrier of scaling their offering due to a lack of online tools. The other was aware of the rental luxury market but had found no platform that was vintage specific.

We will save 2, 024 tonnes of Co2 emissions in our beachhead market each year. The equivalent of reducing the demand of 202, 488 garments being manufactured. With the fashion industry responsible for 4% of global emissions annually and 70% of that occurring during manufacture, slowing the demand for new garment production is crucial.

Our 5 year goal is to reduce manufacturing demand by approximately a million garments whilst making vintage clothing more accessible. Our team consists of Josh Newman, a Software Engineer with 10 years experience in the industry and myself, Cait Hopper, a designer and researcher specialising in the fashion industry and user experience. With this skill set we believe we can execute our vision with speed whilst delivering a delightful and desirable user experience for both Vintage Store Owners and Retro Loving Gen Z.