4 years, 3 Enthusiastic Women, 1 Aim: Reinvention
October 2nd , 2018 | Prachala Anupmeya
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Journey full of adventure
Its 4 years and 6 months, We 3, Chitra Gupta, Varsha Kariya & Prachala Anupmeya
have started our journey together as “Reinvention”. It’s a journey, an adventure, hard work, challenges and very different experience. We have done a lot of things together in this journey. We worked day and night, we celebrated every moment. Even sometimes we have faced depression, fear of losing. But “Reinvention” is going on. Negativity was just a moment and our enthusiasm is constant.
The Idea for Reinvention and how it all started with us
We have started our business with less capital and with a unique idea – “Up-cycling of old, waste and unused clothes”. It was one fine day that the idea came into our mind. The day on which we 3 were discussing what to do with clothes which are still good but we don’t use and even don’t want to donate. Everyone loves shopping and buying new trendy and fashionable clothes. We keep on filling our wardrobes with lots of clothes. We all have lots of clothes bought during festivals and many occasions, which we don’t wear or wish not to wear anymore, neither we can throw it. It's what we call “Love it but can’t wear it”. So, we came up with the idea of making some goods out of it. And that's where we thought of taking the idea of reinventing unused/old/waste fabric. And we initiated one time up-cycling drive at our apartment.
Our one time up-cycling drive was for a cause and encouraging people to reuse and reduce waste. So we kept exhibition at our apartment on Women’s Day 8th March, 2014 and we committed to donate all the money to Vibhutipura Lake Renovation (Bangalore, India). One D-day we had lot of crowd and appreciation. And we decided to continue and take our one time up-cycling drive to next level. And we sowed the seed of Reinvention.
Our vision is to reach across the globe by transforming waste/unused/discarded fabrics into a useful products and mission is to develop/explore innovative methods, technologies and provide services that can up-cycle cloth/fabric to provide a long term benefit to communities and environment through up-cycling. To encourage each and every people to reuse, recreate and reduce the landfill
A Roller Coaster with ups and down
It's been 4 years and 6 months we have started our journey as Reinvention. But it was not less than a roller coaster, with many ups and downs. Like any other new venture, we also have faced a whole lot of challenges. One of our biggest challenge was convincing people to reuse their old clothes, because while some people were enthusiastic about the idea, some were reluctant. Even people who appreciate our idea, do not want to buy end products as those were made from used clothes. People started giving us weird grin while checking our up-cycled products.
So, to convince those people, we decided to let our work speak. We created sample products and exhibited those products. We also arranged some demonstrations and workshops for people to experience our concept of : Reuse and reinvent. After our first outside exhibition on 28th March, 2014 at The Green Bazar, we got published in an online magazine- The Alternative. in (26th April,2014), for our unique concept and work. And after that in May-2014, we received our very 1st order.
Also we approached few boutiques to see what they do with their waste clothes and to our surprise they told that they just throw the cuttings away. We shared our idea of reusing the waste fabrics and they appreciated our idea and gladly agreed to give us leftover clothes. And you will be surprise to know that with boutique leftovers, we have created lots of hand bag, pouches, cushions, cushion covers etc.
How much has it grown up
6 month ago (on 8th March, 2018), Reinvention has celebrated its 4th anniversary. It's been 4 years with lots of experience, enthusiasm, struggle, fear, learning, passion and patience. As we look back, we can still recollect some moments like our 1st order, likes on Facebook, our first review, our first order overseas, our first bulk order etc.
And now after 4 years, we are proud to say that we have upcycled tones of clothes, have lots of creative and useful products, have lots of repetitive customers. We have tied up with boutiques for leftover clothes, with shops for dead stocks. We try to up-cycle each and every piece of cloth. We conduct different workshop for all age groups. We delivered our products in India as well as abroad.
We get many invitations from corporate, schools and social firms to conduct awareness program and workshops. Many people have started opting something green for gifting purpose and contacted us to make them.
And now we can see the small seed that sowed by us, is now turning into sapling.
Though we have not earned much profit in terms of money but we have earned appreciation, support and satisfaction of our customers and that’s what keep us going.
Lessons that we have learnt in our journey
Along this journey, we have learnt major lessons.
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Work speaks more than words – My father always told me that whatever you do, your work will speak for you. Either its good or bad. Same here for our business. We have convinced people to reuse and reinvent the old with our work.
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Build trust with customer – Customer is King. Customer is pillar of any business. Every young entrepreneur should keep in mind that to make business viable in the market, the relationship of trust with customer is the most important factor.
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Learn to say “NO” - Earlier it was difficult but now we do not feel bad for making choices that upset others. We cannot keep everyone happy. Earlier we wanted to please and satisfy everyone but gradually we learnt that even if someone was upset or not happy with us, it was okay to say “no”.
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Learn to say “YES” - We have taken orders of products which we have not done or tried earlier. We said “yes” for making those products. All was great experience and end result was very satisfying.
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Power of Relationship – For us, it's always relationship worked, that we have made with our customers or vendors. Relationships will always be more powerful than marketing.
Our strength is our motivation, dedication and our innovative creation in the form of our products and our customer satisfaction. We are doing our bit to reduce the waste and set the trend again for reusing.
The author of the story are Founders of ReInvention and can be reached at reinvent.with.us@gmail.com
InwasteR is only a platform to share WaStory and the views and experience are purely of the author.