Strong together: how to take part in Chiara Ferragni and Pantene's competition

So the first requirement is that you are a woman and that you live in Italy.
It does not matter if you already have a company, of course you only need a tax code to be a legal entity and be able to participate. So the first requirement: you must be a woman, over 18 years old and resident in Italy.

The second requirement is that the company, or the company you are going to set up, is composed of at least 50% women or that you are the entrepreneur and thus the one to launch the idea.

What interests us most is that candidates for this competition, but for all competitions, must propose something truly innovative, and so we will then see, in the light of Canvas, what elements can make our business idea innovative.

One important point, as I mentioned earlier, is that the project must be financially sustainable and generate economic value (obviously an investor wants to see a return on the investment) or have an important social impact. So it can also be a project that initially does not break even, does not go ahead, but espouses a macro social cause with a very strong impact (we hear a lot about this these days) and therefore the economic value is absolutely put in the background.

Obviously, no one will ever finance an idea that does not have a return on investment. This is the very basis of how business works in general; therefore your idea must always be monetised and monetised.

And there has to be a scale over time that you go and analyse to see how far, hypothetically in the best or worst case scenario, you will recover your investment and be able to continue.

As I was saying at the very level of what is at stake here in the middle, we have a total budget of 75,000, which can be allocated to one or more projects.
So they will not take the first three projects 75,000, but will be divided on the basis of merit and evaluation.

Surely it is not one of those investments that lead you to jump for joy when you calculate that three tied candidates would get 25,000? as a donation.
So 25,000 is certainly a good budget to realise an idea, especially in the fashion field where you can spend even less (many of the projects I follow start with budgets of 10 - 15,000), so 25,000 is certainly a good idea.

Of course, money is not everything: if the idea is not a good one, a lot of money is thrown away or spent in ways that are certainly not effective in planning a business project in the medium to long term.

So coming back to us, we have precisely the modalities and timing of participation.
As I told you, today when I record the video is 20 August, so we have until 20 September until 1pm to deliver the documentation.

What do we have to hand in to participate in this Chiara Ferragni competition?
First of all our contacts, then we have to make a concise description of the project in no less than 150 words.

In America this is normally called a pitch, or lift pitch, which is another context, which means that if you meet your financial backer in a lift, a person who you know might be interested in your project, you have to be able to briefly describe your idea in 150 words or 30 seconds or 1 minute, so here he favours the gift of synthesis, it's not storytelling, but it's simply "I'll make you understand in a few concepts, in 150 words why my idea is effective and why you should finance it".

The second request, in fact, is a presentation deck, up to 12 slides, where we illustrate a bit what is our business plan beyond the idea, so how from our idea we think we will make a profit and then we must automatically go and analyse our costs that we have for the realisation and the costs that we then have to put it on the market.

The fourth optional thing, which I consider very important, is a video pitch, or a three-minute video where you can tell your idea by putting your face to it.

I think it is always important, (so whether you are the brand: so whether you are the first and last name, the designer, the creator, or whether your brand has a fancy name) that you have to put your face to it on some level.
Especially in these competitions, the fact that you expose yourself personally, make a video a little bit like I do right now in front of this camera and you can see what I am telling you, is very important.

So the additional requirements include whether you have prototypes or ideas (but at this stage I think you either already have something you keep in your drawer and want to recycle for this competition, or else you don't have prototypes; go and build a new idea and see if it is of interest).

However, among the non-essential requirements, this video pitch is also very important because if you reasonably want to be an entrepreneur, or an entrepreneur, because you could rightly also be a man and listen to this speech because you are interested in other competitions, if you are not able to easily tell why your idea is different, why it is interesting, why it has an economic value and why I have a market that is ready to receive it, you have a basic problem with the business idea. Honestly, the business is not for shy people, you have to put your face and since it will be tiring and challenging to carry out the start-up phase (which is the one that goes from the first to the third year of every business) it is very important that you put your determination and energy, you put the money if you have to put it, because obviously there is no opportunity seeking, that is, you are not looking for an opportunity to give you the "opportunity" to do a project because Ferragni is paying you for it. No, you must have an entrepreneurial idea and a dream that you want to realise. Obviously if you take the call for proposals it is an extra incentive, but even if you don't take the call for proposals you should evaluate when to start and how to do it.

How will our idea be evaluated?
Also from the announcement (which you can see here in small print but which you can download and find what I am telling you) will be evaluated according to parameters that are standard for start-ups of any general. Obviously when you hear me we are always talking about either design ideas or objects or fashion so textiles in some way in this area.
Of course, this call for start-ups is also open to many other ideas that we won't go into now, so we'll just talk about those areas that characterise my approach and what Be A Designer is.

In the pre-selection process, the first evaluation criterion will be the potential of our market, our ability of the project to create a profit in the medium to long term and thus be able to refinance it, and so on.
Obviously, if our market is very small and has no social resonance, it is more difficult to say that we have great market potential.
Fashion depends, market potential also depends on distribution and on how much we are able to impact the market and a specific target, because talking about the market is very generic. There are not collections, there are not brands that are made for everyone, but obviously they are much more specific.

The second thing we are going to see when we return to Canvas is innovation, the innovativeness of our idea, i.e. the introduction on the market of something that does not exist or a version that does not exist.

It could be a product, a service, a process or an innovative way of distribution. This we will go into a little more detail when we return to Canvas.

The third characteristic is a team: if you are on your own this obviously does not matter, obviously fashion is not a one-man band, you are not a musician who plays, sings and then also literally sings and plays it.
Obviously you need serious partners and so it is evaluated if you maybe have an idea and do it together with three friends or do some kind of network between people with similar skills to help you with your idea surely it is interesting to present your team.

Obviously, the fourth requirement is the promotion and development of female entrepreneurship, so if you have an impact, even if not only the idea, but then you have a supply chain that you can find a female supply chain or make use of workers in the area that can promote and develop female self-entrepreneurship (you could take an artisan, a seamstress and so on), then it could be interesting to tell that there is an idea behind it.

Obviously the whole idea has to be scalable, so if you make a custom or bespoke bespoke it is less scalable than the idea they want to tell here.

Always remember that no matter what business idea we may have before we enter, we enter the competition trying to give them the idea they want, not trying to adapt our business to their idea because that would be much much more complex.

Of course we need to have a reasonable timeframe, an idea of how long it takes to start our project.

Now let us go back to the Canvas to make some reflections on how we can make our own suitable and attractive.
Without a good idea, there can be no good business, so this is perhaps the most important thing: if our idea is all over the place and not sustainable in the short term, let alone for a competition that asks us to assess the impact and sustainability of our idea in the medium term.