WINNER:  Styled By Africa

RUNNER-UP: MakersCAFE

SHORTLISTED: Ester Kubisz and Lunchbox

The Culture Capital Exchange and Toucan Ventures Limited recently partnered to introduce an exclusive opportunity for young creative businesses through the Spotted In initiative. In this, it’s pilot year, Spotted In 2016 aimed to identify entrepreneurial and creative talent in the Food & Beverage, Lifestyle or Retail sectors. We were looking for unique, commercially scalable businesses, with passionate, creative and ambitious founders.

The Founder and CEO of Toucan, Rasha Khawaja and Founding Director of The Culture Capital Exchange, Suzie Leighton were joined by guest judges Nicola Dewar, Head of Learning and Talent Development, Crafts Council and Jakki Pay, Director of Design, Women’s Wear and Fashion Accessories, House of Fraser to judge the Spotted In 2016 applications.

The judges based their decisions on the following criteria; creativity, commercial viability, scalability, founder experience and market need. Their feedback was incredibly positive about the range of applications that were submitted, especially in the initiative’s first year of launch. However, there were four companies that stood out from the crowd.

Congratulations to Ravensbourne’s Ester Kubisz and to Lunchbox for progressing to the shortlist, to runner-up MakersCAFE and finally to Styled By Africa (King’s College London graduate Alae Ismail) who has been selected as the winner of ‘Spotted in’ for 2016.

WINNER:
Styled By Africa
Styled By Africa (SBA) was founded as a way of using fashion to support African manufacturing and encourage sustainable trade. Its founders spend months travelling across Africa to find the best contemporary ‘Made in Africa’ fashion and accessories brands that value quality and design as much as they do.
http://www.styledbyafrica.com/

RUNNER-UP:
MakersCAFE
MakersCAFE love digital manufacturing (3d printing and laser cutting) and coffee. It is half maker-space, half cafe. General public can come in, grab a coffee, discuss projects, come up with a creative idea and get things made on the spot by using our machines, while relaxing and sipping their coffee. We also provide consultancy services if they do not have the skillset to turn sketches into digital files. Events and workshops are also a major part of our business, where we provide experiential/promotional events for high street brands and educational workshops for general public and schools. www.makerscafe.com

SHORTLISTED:

Ester Kubisz
Ester Kubisz is a high-end, unisex fashion label based in London. The label emerged in January 2016 following an award winning graduate collection. Our aim is to merge unique styling with traditional approach to clothes-making focused on quality. At ESTER KUBISZ, we deconstruct and recreate the conventional professional men’s wardrobe. Our USP is to provide unique styling with tailored quality. http://esterkubisz.com/

Lunch Box
Lunch Box will be a network of self-service and secured fridges stocked with healthy chilled meals from high-street cafés and restaurants – feeding patrons within offices in town, business parks, hospitals and universities.

There will be a presentation by the winner at Toucan’s annual conference ‘The Nest’ on 12th January 2017.
For more information on this event, please see the Toucan website.