A fashion brand service that fosters new friendships between people of different age.

Brief
Design a service that helps people increase social capital through mutual trust and interdependence. To demonstrate the potential viability of this service through continual learning with potential users and stakeholders.

Context
Through our research, our key insight was that fashion trends are cyclical and people have a lot of clothes lying around which they don’t wear anymore. These clothes belonged to a fashion era, and people have these clothes without realising it. After interviewing more people there was a clear pattern or an outlier. We asked ourselves if these vintage clothes be a carrier of a new connection? This thought gave us the context to think about an online + IRL service that fosters friendships through style.

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Research Overview

We choose the category of elderly people and young generation. Carrying out desk research and interviews (elderly people, teens, young professionals) gave us many examples where both the age groups interact with each other. Narrowing down these interactions into themes gave us some common insights. We then leveraged those insights and looked at the various market gaps that emerged during our research. This gave us a clear visibility into a unique service opportunity.

Quotes from interviewees

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“My grand daughter and her friends shop vintage all the time. She has her unique way of pairing the old and the new. She recently also made a bag for herself from her mothers old shirt"

Søren ReeksRetired school teacher
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“Oh yeah, everyone shops at these things (Red cross). The rich, the poor, the old, and the young. I mean if the dress looks good on you why would you not buy it, after all its all about how the dress makes you feel."

Eve CrawfordComputer Engineer
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“It’s cool when someone compliments my dress, I say thanks and with the vintage clothes there is always a story to tell. I recently bought a leather jacket where I added macrame knots with a jute rope, and its become my goto party jacket"

Elisa GrahamIntercept Interview
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"when I gave my old embroidered skirts to my daughter, I always told her where I had bought them from and the whole story behind the embroidery and why I loved that"

Karen ToftWorks at a bank

Insights

1

A sense of purpose

People like to feel needed, it helps cultivate a sense of belonging.
2

Old but gold

Nobody sees a taboo in buying second hand or used clothes.
3

Wearing a story

People have a quest for owning exclusive pieces of fashion that they can talk about

The market gap

There existed a gap between two user groups. First, the people who have have clothes lying around from a particular trend/era that they don’t use anymore. Second, people who want to live through those trends in the current day and are in quest of finding places to buy them. We wanted to leverage this gap in the market to foster personal connections and community through this exchange.

The service

An online + IRL service that fosters friendships through style.

1. Old clothes to sell

2. Clothes get picked up

3. Uploading on the portal

4. New buyer buys the clothes

5. The clothes get delivered

The seller uploads an old picture of them wearing that dress and writes a short note for the new buyer. When the new buyer receives the box, they see the note and picture. From co-creation activities, we realised the note and image have a powerful impact in forming a personal connection. Once the personal connection has been formed, the buyer has an option to follow the seller on the portal and meet them at various events and workshops hosted by reissue.

Abstracted service blue print

Sacrificial concepts

Low fidelity prototype

Service blue-print

Low fidelity prototype

Future Planning

Touch points

Discovery

  • Marketing campaigns 
  • Physical store & app based interactions 
  • Logistics partners

Packaging & pickup

  • Pickup team activity
  • Physical store and service personnel
  • App Notifications

Supply chain entry

  • Warehouse and logistics
  • 3rd party partnerships

Discovery for purchase

  • Customized feed 
  • Payments
  • Recycling and upcycling

Connection/meetup

  • Events and workshops 
  • New skills and connections

Community building

  • The long term impact of the service

So how is this different from a thrift store?

THE VALUE PROPOSITION

Wearing a story on your sleeve

People engage in the story, and establish a deeper connection with the item on sale (higher likelihood of purchase)

Fostering new friendships

The service facilitates social connection and community, offering buyers and sellers an opportunity to meet like-minded people. Over time, involvement increases.

The long term goal of reissue is to build a community through events and clothes exchange. The service is also planned to be sustainable over the long run since it promotes the exchange and reuse of second hand clothes.

Team

Siddharth Ahuja
Zoe Cooper