Anew

Giving back is crucial to any and every community, but the process has been unchanged for decades. With Anew we looked to streamline the clothing donation process while also addressing the looming problem of wasteful textile consumption. Through an local digital marketplace one can find a multitude of affordable secondhand goods from the comfort of their couch

Deliverable

Digital Consignment and Donation Solution with IoT integration

Setting

Group Project with Jena Martin & Hadyn Hawkins

Timeline

10 weeks

The Problem

We are producing more and re-using less, with the average American throwing away 82 pounds of textile waste each year. Communities are in constant need of affordable sustainable clothing, and an efficient donation process is essential to supply such a demand.

Our Solution

Create a platform that allows for an easier, at-home donation process that gives back directly to its local community. All while promoting a more sustainable (and fashionable) closet through a secondhand shopping marketplace.

Digital Marketplace

Content curated just for you based off previous purchases and shopping habit's help sort through thousands of secondhand items into a smaller more shop-able selection. Donated items that are not in a desirable condition to be sold are recycled into fabrics that are also available through the marketplace

Donate from Home

Simply request a donation bag to be sent to your home, and once it arrives connect it through the app, throw in whatever you no longer need and log it, and send it back off. You then get the choice of in store credit for your items or to donate that credit to a selection of local charities

Our Process

We started things off by interviewing two people we saw as specialists in the two fields we were super interested in before landing on our final concept, Logistics and Waste Management. At the beginning of this project we were un-sure with what route we wanted to take and we used these interviews to gather basic insights in both fields which lead us to find something that combined both

Logistics Head of Operations Quote

“It’s about the brand, it’s about the post purchase experience. Everything that you connect the consumer with whether it’s digital or physical should be about that experience and that interaction with the consumer”

Waste Management Engineer Quote

“When people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, generally don’t have the resources to concern about the environment. They have other problem’s, clean water, food and shelter.”

Key Interview Insights

Create an experience that extends past what’s inside the package, but rather the package itself

There needs to be innovations to allow for an easier flow of packages through the supply chain to promote reusability

Sustainability and logistics go hand in hand, but right now have a bit of a rocky relationship

Just because you no longer have use for something, doesn’t mean someone else can’t

Paper products accounts for a huge amount of the waste we are producing everyday. Migrating to single use products can make a huge difference

Current trends of sustainability cater to the well-off and can be inaccessible to the lower class who have other matters to worry about

After the interviews and some secondary research, we found textile and packaging waste to be major problem areas that both industries faced. We launched a survey to gain more insight on the topics of online shopping, delivery, donating and shopping secondhand

80% of our participants were 17 to 22 years old and 76% were female. We found that while almost all of them had been thrift shopping in the past, the majority don’t use digital versions such as Poshmark, but they do most of their shopping online. Participants said they were more willing to wait a few more days for free shipping, but a vast majority also cited Amazon as their most used site for the speed and convenience.

Everyone has had some sort of shipping nightmare. User’s seemed frustrated by lack of transparency in the processes of buying, selling, and donating clothing.
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They weren’t always sure where their donations would end up, what they were receiving, and were discouraged by poor customer service. But, they love the excitement and novelty of secondhand shopping, and the joy of giving rather than throwing away.

Research Conclusions

Based off the different interviews we conducted and the survey we sent out, we narrowed down our insights into 3 basic user needs we wanted to address

An inexpensive, quick moving enterprise that’s hassle free for the user

An organized environment where you can quickly find exactly what you need

Eco-conscious and transparent business practices that helps not only the consumer but also the community

from there, we created our Persona's, user journey, and eventually developed out our final product, Anew
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While developing our persona's and diving into who we see using our product, the idea of locality really stuck out to us. The persona's we were creating had deep roots in their communities and we were curious how we could possibly push that. Going into our wire framing, we developed the idea of keeping Anew a service local to a selection of certain cities. Doing that allowed for us to include the feature of being able to give back the value of their donated items to a local charity of their choice rather than just receive store credit. Igniting real change in the user's own community.

Wireframing

Our Impact

Setting Trends
Removing Stigmas
Supporting Locality
Encouraging Reusing
Reducing Waste
Promoting Inclusivity
Setting The Bar
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Other projects:

Bridge

Porsche

Nicolas Pellegrino