Hi, this is our first blog entry about our new business and our NESTA: Starter for 6 experience. Its been quite an exciting time, so we thought we'd start writing about it and let others know what we are up to and how we're going about setting up.
What is Cut Out And Collect?
Ok so we've not reinvented the wheel but what we will do is create products people already use but made from recycled and organic materials. Cut Out And Collect will be an environmentally friendly limited edition clothing line, selling and distributing handmade, recycled, organic clothing, with a feel of Art and Design and Contemporary style. To begin with we will mainly produce T-shirts but hope to expand into others areas as soon as possible. Like a limited edition art print, each design will be one of a very limited number, making each product more exclusive. Each T-shirt will be numbered and dated like an art print. Once a T-shirt style is printed it will never be printed again. Also because we will produce a limited run of each product we can take greater care in creating it. I'm not going to tell you everything just yet but ill be letting you know more as we go along.
What we've been up to so far.
At the end of last year we applied to NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) Starter for 6 programme. Starter for 6 is an enterprise development project, running in Scotland. They aim to support entrepreneurs by helping create an environment where innovation can flourish, well thats what it says on the website (
www.nesta.org.uk). As always we left it to the very last minute to send in our applications but got them in just in time.
The Interview.
On the 10th January we received an email to say we had been selected to go forward to the next stage. We had to attend an interview on the 23rd January and we sat up to 6 in the morning preparing for the interview the night before. We had to give a 5 to 10 minute presentation about our idea and why the Starter for 6 programme would benefit us. This was followed by about 20 minutes of questions from the 4 members on the interview panel. We were both quite nervous and stumbled our way through our presentation.
What happened.
Well we weren't supposed to find out until the 30th of January if we had been excepted onto the programme or not but the next day we received an email to say that we had been offered a place on the Starter for 6 programme. We like to think that we were so good that they let us know straight away or maybe they just didn't have that many people apply.
So, What Now.
So for the next few month we will be attending one Training day a month. Our first day is at the beginning of February and we hope to keep you up to date about what's happening with the Starter for 6 programme and our progress.
