Filip Westerlund, founder of Our Choice;
Credit: Our Choice / Silicon Luxembourg
At the time of writing, Luxembourgish startup Our Choice has raised over €18,000 as part of its crowdfunding campaign for the world's first circular trainers.
With three days to go, Our Choice's Kickstarter campaign has collected over €18,000 from more than 150 backers for these natural and plastic-free sport shoes. The delivery of the first copies of the shoes is set for March 2021.
Filip Westerlund, Founder of Our Choice, told Silicon Luxembourg: “We are fully funded so that’s good news. We still have the ‘stretch goal’ to reach 200 backers. That’s part of the concept: to unlock new features such as more colours. It has to do with our suppliers looking for quantities and volume. So the more backers we get, the more colours we can unlock”.
Finishing his Master in Psychology at the University of Luxembourg, the student-entrepreneur has a strong interest in sustainable behavioural change. He decided to start his company within the University of Luxembourg Incubator, where he has received support from the Venture Mentoring Service programme as well as experienced advisors and mentors on a pro bono basis.
The story of Our Choice started two years ago when Filip looked at his wardrobe and saw a big pile of broken plastic trainers. He tried to get them mended but this was not possible since plastic is neither mendable nor durable. The student thus wanted to make something that is high quality and would last for many years to come. The trainers are repairable, so that the environmental impact becomes much lower than if one were to buy multiple plastic ones.
Commenting on how he turned his idea of circular trainers into a reality, Filip said: “I have a business partner. He is a chemical engineer and we know each other for years. That was the step number one to start the projet and expand on the knowledge. I’m not a fashion designer, nor an engineer but I started by building a team, on boarding advisors and members to really push forward". Another major part of the project was manufacturing. The team has an agreement with a factory in Portugal to produce the first pair of shoes.
Filip added: “The challenge for us is to do everything with nothing. We don’t have any funds, no investors, our plans to raise funds abroad was cancelled due to the COVID situation, so we went for this idea of crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter”.
To support this project, visit this Kickstarter page and and choose an offer.
This information is based on an article originally published on Silicon Luxembourg.
