AWAYTOMARS: tearing up the rulebook and opening up the fashion industry

AWAYTOMARS ,the world’s first 100% user-created fashion brand, has been selected to join the Centre For Fashion Enterprise, an organisation supported by University of the Arts London, the British Fashion Council and the European Union.

Alumni of the scheme include J.W. Anderson, Simone Rocha and LVMH Prize winners Marques’Almeida.
 AWAYTOMARS will present its new collaborative collection in the first week of October at Lisbon Fashion Week. More than 500 people have already contributed to its creative conception online.

HOW AWAYTOMARS WORKS:
They host campaigns where anyone, regardless of their background, can submit an idea and get instant feedback from the community.
Sketches and ideas are sent online from members of the public and AWAYTOMARS then iterates them with the help of its online community to create eye-catching, collaborative fashion.

 Next, AWAYTOMARS works with technical experts to create physical prototypes, organises a crowdfunding campaign for each product, oversees the entire production process and finally hosts the finished item on its sales portal.

The most innovative and interesting concepts are selected by the community and a group of curators; these advance to the next phase - crowdfunding - where each item runs as an individual campaign.
Backers have the opportunity to support the designers by pre-ordering pieces at wholesale prices

 All successfully funded designs are produced as a co-created item in a process overseen by technical experts at AWAYTOMARS.
These experts turn designers’ ideas into reality using their knowledge of fabrics and techniques and by calling on their relationships with producers in Europe.

 At AWAYTOMARS the community members are involved at every step of the design process: they decide what is ultimately produced.
Compared to traditional methods of product development in the fashion industry, AWAYTOMARS is cost and time effective: there’s no seasonality, nor is there inventory piling up in the stock room. Production is based on what has been pre-sold during the crowdfunding campaigns.
 AWAYTOMARS also proposes a new sales model to reward collaboration, in which profits are shared between both the original designers and any community members who provided significant input to shape the item.

www.awaytomars.com