The Bespoke Mentoring Programme will deliver to 25 businesses technical and strategic support in order to facilitate and scale-up innovations in term of products/services, processes, and market approaches within the Fashion-Tech field. Mentorship aims to boost innovation through knowledge transfer and cross-sectoral collaboration. Mentors will be selected from the consortium partners which are European leading fashion and design academic institutions, Business Support Organizations and industry specialist networks. Additional relevant support from external sources will be provided, when required.
Mentoring and coaching will be delivered to the selected candidates for a duration of 8 months and will lead to the launch of a proof of concept or prototype illustrating the innovation development. We will provide 10 days’ support delivered over 8 months, a dedicated programme of 80 hours mentoring according to the selected businesses specific needs.
- 24 hours of support from a lead supervisor
- General direction on the development and innovation process
- Monitoring performance ensuring proper due diligence
- Initial assessment of the start-up’s/SMEs’ needs
- Tracking progress
- Ensuring additional support if required
- 40 hours of technical mentoring
- Technical and scientific support to research
- Product development
- Prototyping and testing
- Product-Service System Innovation
- 8 hours of business management support
- Tailored made business support
- IP Mentoring, including half an hour of private legal consultancy with a leading legal firm
- Technology transfer and exploitation
- 8 hours of investment readiness support
- Financing and business planning, and investment strategies
- Identifying the right type of finance and getting investment ready
- Preparing to professionally pitch to equity investors at designated investment forums
- Guiding through due-diligence processes and developing of term sheets.
The selected start-ups and SMEs will have the chance to access relevant facilities and physical spaces (labs and technical resources, equipment, infrastructure, and tools) made available by four leading Fashion, Technology and Design institutions members of the DeFINE Consortium e.g. London College of Fashion’s Digital Learning Labs, CyRIC Business Innovation Centre and Gravity Incubator, CEEI-Burgos Business Incubator, Politecnico LAB-Photo and LAB-Moda Polifactory, FashionInk Smart Textile Prototype Factory, Institut Français de la Mode incubators and Paris La Fabrique Fablab.
In addition to one-to-one mentoring, selected businesses will be able to access the online resources (as webinars and toolkits) to facilitate their business development.
Further benefits are included within the DeFINE Mentoring Programme. The results of the start-ups/SMEs supported by the project will be showcased at industry events and promoted through the online platform and the channels of the partners. Investments forums will be organized for selected Fashion-Tech businesses to pitch their ideas. Mentees will also be linked with a network of accelerators and incubators who can support them also after having taken part into the Bespoke Mentoring Programme.