The six finalists for the Tommy Hilfiger Fashion Frontier challenge have been announced.
This challenge is designed to support entrepreneurs from black, indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC), who are “working towards advancing their communities while fostering an inclusive future in fashion”.
Global scale-ups and startups submitted over 430 applications. Then, the selection process was narrowed by a set of criteria that included potential market growth and social impact.
These are the six finalists:
Clothes to good: A South African social enterprise that creates microbusiness opportunities and jobs through textile recycling for people with disabilities, their families and mothers.
Haelixa: A Switzerland-based product traceability system that aims at accelerating the transition to transparent consumer goods supply chain chains.
Mafi Mafi: It is an Ethiopian sustainable fashion brand that creates ready-to-wear collections. It preserves ancient traditions and empowers marginalized artisans.
Lalaland: A Netherlands-based platform that uses artificial Intelligence to create customized and inclusive synthetic models with a variety of ages, ethnicities, and sizes.
Soko: A Kenya-based jewelry company that uses mobile technology for connecting marginalized Kenyan craftspeople directly to the global market via a mobile platform.
Uzuri K&Y: A Rwandan-based ecofriendly shoe brand. It uses recycled car tires from subsaharan Africa. It employs local youth and gives them skills that will help them achieve economic independence.
The six finalists will now present their business ideas to a panel of sustainability and business leaders at the final event in Jan.
Two winners will each receive 200,000 euros in support of their ventures.
They will also be mentored for a year by Tommy Hilfiger, experts from Insead and other business school executives.
The ‘Audience Favorite Finalist’ will receive an additional 15,000 Euro.
