eBay UK and BFC unveil circularity innovation grant recipients

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 22, 2022

By Rotation, Pip & Henry and the Circular Textiles Foundation are among the six winners of eBay UK and the British Fashion Council’s first Circular Fashion Innovator’s Fund.

The fund aims to help grow small businesses that are providing more sustainable fashion solutions, and will deliver £100,000 in grants.

Each of the six winning businesses will receive mentoring from industry leaders and a £15,000 grant to accelerate their growth. An overall winner will also be announced soon and will get an additional £10,000 grant. 

As mentioned, By Rotation was one of the top six with the “world’s first social network for fashion lovers to rent and lend quality items to each other” already having over 500,000 downloads in the UK and preparing to expand to the US soon.

Circular textiles Foundation is a business linking clothing design, take-back and recycling technologies. This includes a certified QR code system allowing consumers to interact with a garment, the brand and to play a part in its circular journey.

The Seam on-demand tailoring service that makes clothing alterations and repairs accessible through tech was another winner. It has completed 10,000 repairs and provides white-label care and repair platforms to fashion retailers.

Meanwhile, next on the winners list was SAGES, an innovator of natural dyes made from food waste, providing a commercial alternative to harmful synthetic dyes that are responsible for 80% of the emissions caused by the fashion industry. 

There there’s Pip & Henry, a designer of “unique sustainable shoes for kids, made with innovative recycled and bio-materials”. It also provides recycling solutions and eco-educational content and stories for kids. It has come up with a shoe that ‘grows’ with a growing child’s foot and can be cleanly disassembled into component parts for recycling.

Finally Circular Inc Ltd is a business providing circular design and sustainable manufacturing to accompany radio frequency identification (RFID)-assisted commercial repair and upcycling of clothing.

Lucy Peacock, Head of Pre-loved at eBay UK, said: “Circularity is the future of fashion, and over recent years start-ups and small businesses have been at the forefront of solutions to make it a reality. The winners of the Circular Fashion Innovator’s Fund epitomise this, and we hope that the mentoring and grant will help scale these promising businesses in size and reach, and in turn make sustainable fashion practices more accessible to more people.”