One of the things we are always interested to explore in our stories is the impulse that drives a founder from an idea to an actual venture. We’ve seen them come as a one-man show, as a couple, and as a team solving a somewhat unusual problem. At inventures, we like to support initiatives that have the potential to become a trigger. That’s why we have agreed to partner with the Founders Battle – an academic challenge to start a company, initiated by Stefan Perkmann Berger from WhatAVenture. The idea was to propose a challenge to all teams and award the most innovative, complete and viable response.
Our challenge, the “Business model Bash,” required participants to create an innovative business model around a student-campus newspaper. The competition was fierce and choosing a winner – very difficult. Yet, we’ve made our call, and we have the pleasure to introduce you to impetuz fashion. Here’s what their team had to tell us about themselves.
An impetuz T-shirt design Photo credit: impetuz fashionWhat is impetuz fashion?
Impetuz is a fashion label with a purpose. Each collection is inspired by one particular culture of the world, thus the designs are not only stylish but also carry cultural knowledge. This is delivered to t-shirt owners through a booklet that contains detailed information about the cultural images illustrated on the t-shirts. Also, our items are hand-printed and we make sure that they are entirely produced ecologically and socially fair. In the end, our mission is to become a fashion label that is known for creativity, quality, high moral standards and innovation, similar to Austrian companies like Zotter and Sonnentor.
Who is behind the idea of impetuz?
Michael (Schmidt) and Gorjan (Lojpur) represent the founder duo. They’ve known each other for a while, since they met at a crazy party somewhere in Austria some years ago. Both of them have already lived abroad in several different countries and love to get to know new cultures. They are supported by Michael’s long-term friends Daniel (Sobotka) and Arne (Hochleitner) who are in charge of the website development and online representation. Then there is also Cecilia (Fang) and Dai (Kasai), who are part of the avant-garde and represent the creative minds. Dai, who is from Japan, is the cultural advisor for impetuz since the first collection is inspired by Japanese culture. And Cecilia, who comes from China and currently studies in London, transferred this knowledge into our first collection. In short, we are a diverse team with a good mix of skills.
Why did you join Founders Battle?
It is very tough as an entrepreneur to put your idea into practice, since there are always obstacles along the way to success. Therefore, it is great to get to know others that might work on completely different projects, but are in a similar stage of invention, and face comparable challenges.
What was your biggest learning from the Founders Battle so far?
Since our idea of revolutionising the fashion industry won’t take place from one day to the other, it is a process that requires patience. And we have learned that it is therefore quite difficult to compete against ideas that are easily scalable (the best example are apps).
What is going to be your secret weapon for the Founders Battle finals?
Lots of passion and (don’t tell anyone) a unicorn!
Stay tuned while we keep an eye out for impetuz fashion’s progress along the way!
