NAME OF STARTUP: Project Cece
FOUNDED IN (Year): 2019
FOUNDER’S NAME: Marcella Wijngaarden
THE IDEA: What is the problem being solved by your startup / business?:
Consumer demand for sustainably and ethically made products is growing rapidly, but it remains challenging to find ethical products as they are often offered by decentralized, smaller brands and businesses.
Project Cece offers consumers a curated, central place to access products from hundreds of businesses with ethical production at their core. This way, Project Cece gives consumers the ease and accessibility of a large platform, while still shopping sustainable and supporting independent small businesses.
Project Cece uses in-house developed web tools to automatically collect the products of all these sustainable webshops on one website, giving the user a complete overview of all available ethical clothing.
With insightful sustainability icons, to-the-point descriptions and filters, Project Cece helps consumers find products that fit their style, budget, and values.
THE FOUNDER’S STORY: When and how did you come up with the idea for the business?:
Project Cece was founded by three students: the sisters Marcella and Melissa Wijngaarden and Noor Veenhoven. When they realized the large negative impact the fashion industry really has on people and the environment, they decided to make the switch to sustainable fashion.
But finding ethical clothing turned out to be not as easy as finding fast-fashion, for which you can use sites with large collections such as Asos and Zalando.
Ethically made clothing is harder to find as it is spread out over many, typically smaller, webshops such that you have to browse multiple websites to find what you’re looking for. The founders had a simple goal for Project Cece: making it accessible and fun to buy sustainable fashion.
Noor Veenhoven (Director & COO) and Marcella Wijngaarden (Director & CTO) have a background in Physics and Astronomy, while Melissa Wijngaarden (Director & CFO) studied Economics & Business Administration.
They apply their technical skills and previous experience working for international scientific collaborations and universities, fintech startups and international corporations in the Project Cece founding team. They are experts on sustainability, appearing in national news and media regularly, and passionate about data and tech, uniquely positioning them to build a product that can change the industry.
WHO IS THE CUSTOMER: What is the typical profile of your target customer? Where would they be located?:
Consumers, Sustainability sector
LESSONS TO SHARE: What 3 key lessons from your startup you’d like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs?:
Project Cece is a platform that lists all clothing, shoes and accessories offered by numerous sustainable webshops on one website, so that the entire range can be accessed in one place.
This makes them a sustainable counterpart to online fast-fashion giants such as Boohoo, Asos, Zalando and Amazon. By using their in-house data tools and not relying on limiting third party tools, they can easily work with any ethical business, small or large.
The Project Cece Impact Analysis team curates every brand and makes the sustainability information available in a clear and insightful way.
HQ City: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Website URL: https://www.projectcece.com
Number of Employees: 1-5
