How can we change the paradigm whereby small businesses struggle to survive and bring them to a state of resilience and stability, while developing a community model that gives strength to its members?
This project focuses on small businesses in the fashion sector, accessories and jewelry made in local production in small series. The values of the small business lie mainly in its unique DNA, in a design language characterizing the products, the appearance of the physical and digital store, the shopping experience and sometimes also the raw materials and work techniques. This story connects the small business to the customers, and enables their interaction and identification with the business.
Despite their uniqueness and importance, many of those businesses are struggling to survive. COVID-19 has exposed their fragility and required them to search for new ways of survival and subsistence. Along with the difficulty, the search has created potential opportunities for creating new sales and interaction channels, internal organizational changes, and new skills development. The project examines how to change the paradigm that small businesses are run in a constant state of survival and bring them to a state of stability and leadership by developing a community that empowers its members.
As a designer and small business owner, the personal context along with a literature review, formal fieldwork and countless informal conversations and experiences have formed a research arena moving on the axis between local and global. The experiment of creating a primary cell as part of a network of urban laboratories with the participation of designers led me to the idea of developing a supportive community for small businesses and starting the process already during the designers’ academic studies, as an integral part of developing their design language.
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