CARMA

Nowadays, it is common to order several versions of a product and send the unwanted versions back after receiving it. This leads to unneeded transport, logistic effort, and pollution. Moreover, gifts and other products are often seen as expendable and are replaced or thrown away after a few days. This mindset creates a throw-away society that promotes products with a short life cycle. Furthermore, this unsustainable tendency also threatens the meaning and value of gifts given by friends or relatives. Even if people try to purchase more meaningful gifts or products, it is often hard to find possibilities, and do-it-yourself is often way too time-consuming.

We are providing an add-on to online shops through which customers can enter our website and customize the product they are interested in. For example, a customer finds a purse in one of our partner online shops. The customer sees a button for customizing the chosen product which is an unexpected value gain for the customer. After clicking the button, the customer is led to our website where they can customize the chosen product by choosing from various options (e.g. embroidery, engraving, painting). In the case that the customer likes to get something even more special, there is the option to leave the contact information and we will co-design a solution with the customer. After the customer decided on a design, the product will get sent from the online shop to one of our various partners who customize the product. In this way, we offer online shops an add-on that is increasing their value proposition. We are offering small startups and experts in the crafting domain an increased number of customers. And we offer customers an easy and convenient way of customizing products while offering more design possibilities than our competition. Lastly, this will decrease the number of mindlessly ordered and returned products.