🎙: What inspired the start-up and what does it do?
🧙🏻♀️: This US-based tech start-up was founded by two Gen Z entrepreneurs that are highly versed in technology and app development. They identified a key pain point in their community: young consumers wanted to shop more responsibly but struggled to identify truly sustainable options and “noise” from brands that are all telling their sustainability story in their own way. To address this, they developed a platform designed for young shoppers that functions similarly to a social media space for buying clothes. In addition, the platform would allow small fashion companies to provide more data and information on the environmental footprint of their clothing so that consumers could compare products.
🎙: What is the biggest challenge they face?
🧙🏻♀️: The founders encountered an obstacle when engaging small and medium-sized fashion businesses, most SMEs face when working on conveying their sustainability efforts – they have no concrete data to validate their claims. This challenge reflects a broader market reality, where increased awareness around greenwashing and regulatory pressure for evidence-based environmental claims have made it difficult for SMEs to communicate about their unique products, simply because they do not know how to gather the needed data to do so the platform faces limited participation from potential brand partners.
🎙: In what ways did Baba Yaga work with the founders to address these challenges?
🧙🏻♀️: We supported the founders through a two-fold approach. First, we worked with them to refine their value proposition. While the platform was first positioned toward consumers, this created a “chicken and egg” issue where limited brand participation prevented meaningful user engagement. Through consultation, we identified small fashion businesses as the critical early-stage stakeholder. We then re-designed the business canvas of the company to create value for SMEs. The platform was repositioned to provide environmental metric calculations for participating businesses, as long as they were able to input their operational data. This way, the platform helped the small businesses solve an issue that they were facing in their operations by having reliable metrics that they could use to communicate the positive environmental impact of their products.
🎙: What impacts did Baba Yaga ultimately deliver for the company?
🧙🏻♀️: Following the repositioning and business model refinement, the application was then developed successfully where they were able to create a local community of young, small designer brands that could connect to consumers directly and share their stories and verified environmental impact. Soon after the initial development phase the two founders were able to launch their pilot and test their business model with a solid product behind it.