Project Cece, built and launched by its female founders in 2017, is expanding to offer European shoppers an alternative to fast-fashion platforms. Based in Amsterdam, the platform has already expanded to Germany and the UK, and the founders want to take their mission for sustainable fashion to more countries.
Project Cece grew using its own revenue and achieved pre-seed funding to a total of €125k from ASIF Ventures and Pitchdrive.
The platform was established by the three women while they were students in Amsterdam as they began to learn about the harmful impact of the fashion industry. In the era of online shopping and discount retailers, consumers have become accustomed to the fast fashion lifestyle, much to the detriment of our environment. Fast fashion is a major contributor to pollutants in our environment, and to worker exploitation.
Founders, Melissa Wijngaarden, Noor Veenhoven, and Marcella Wijngaarden wanted to buy sustainable and ethically made products but found they were much harder to find and required a lot of research time. They discovered that while there were many small sustainable fashion brands, they just couldn’t compete on the scale of fast fashion brands on their own.
Project Cece was developed with the belief that ethical and sustainable products should be the standard, and that it should not be so much harder to find than fast fashion products that are harmful to the environment and people. The inspiring female innovators coded the platform and related web tools themselves. As a result, the fashion platform already has the research done for consumers, empowering them to make more ethically-minded purchases, and it is presented in an intuitive way.
After initial success in the Netherlands the social impact startup launched in Germany and the UK. With an English-language site, it was clear there was a demand for this platform across Europe, leading to this new international launch.
The founders said: “We want to offer European shoppers the ease and accessibility of a large platform, while still shopping sustainable and supporting independent small businesses”.
Through its innovative web technology, Project Cece does not rely on third-party services and is able to work with small and large businesses that produce ethically and sustainably, leading to the largest number of curated sustainable fashion products in one place.
