The business plan submitted for the Project Manager diploma revealed the type of product – “interior furniture with a very high visual impact intended for interior design with the need to affirm the concepts of innovation and ecology” – and the competitive advantages: “their recovery and very fast and non-polluting creative use of upcycling as furniture components makes the final product innovative, with increased visual impact through shape, combination, ecological and novelty character”, including the lack of similar offers on the Romanian market and the low degree of replicability as “niche products, on the border between handicraft and industrial (manufacturing) production, with an artistic architectural design”.
The business plan also took into account the context regarding the demand or need for such objects, in the context in which the post-2008 economic crisis and the increase in the degree of eco-civic education may lead to an increase in the segment of the population that no longer wants to be part of the “general wave of consumption, amid awareness of the need to reduce the use of raw materials, respectively the EU’s efforts to encourage the sustainable and efficient use of natural resources by promoting energy efficiency, the low-carbon economy, environmental protection and adaptation to climate change have increased waste recovery initiatives, including creative ones, through recycling or upcycling, exponentially increasing the public’s interest in this type of product (see the local case of Upside Down SRL, which successfully makes and sells wallets, bags, purses, pencil cases, etc. from truck tarpaulins or street banners).”
Similarly, our products convert short-life materials and waste into longer-lasting objects with very low to zero energy consumption. The collection, recovery, reuse and upcycling of cardboard tubes, which have special properties of vertical mechanical resistance (compression), is very useful given their size and volume, which significantly reduces the amount of waste going to landfills and requiring a complex recycling process.