Your prod­uct. Your sus­tain­abil­i­ty vision.
Our start­up competition.

Your prod­uct. Your sus­tain­abil­i­ty vision.
Our start­up competition.

Be part of it. Be NEXT>IN SUSTAINABILITY.
Your inno­va­tion at SXSW 2021.

NEXT>IN SUSTAINABILITY
Germany´s most inno­v­a­tive star­tups | SXSW 2021 in …

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NEXT>IN SUSTAINABILITY
Germany´s most inno­v­a­tive star­tups | SXSW 2021 in …

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The idea. It’s always eas­i­er to make a dif­fer­ence togeth­er. That’s why omnichan­nel retail­er QVC has launched NEXT>IN SUSTAINABILITY with the Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment as its patron. The start­up com­pe­ti­tion hon­ors founders whose prod­ucts add more sus­tain­abil­i­ty to our every­day lives. We’re look­ing for prod­ucts in the cat­e­gories of:

  • Fash­ion
  • Food
  • Beau­ty
  • Inno­va­tion

The prize.

The three win­ners in the cat­e­gories of Fash­ion, Food & Beau­ty can look for­ward to ben­e­fit­ing from QVC’s accu­mu­lat­ed exper­tise in prod­uct devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing and sales. In addi­tion to tak­ing part in var­i­ous coach­ing pro­grams, the founders will have their prod­ucts mar­ket­ed via QVC’s high-reach sales chan­nels. That means they could soon find their way into the wardrobes, kitchens and bath­rooms of some 1.7 mil­lion cus­tomers in Ger­many and Aus­tria. The pack­age also includes being part of a men­tor­ing program.

The cat­e­go­ry Inno­va­tion has an addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer: The cat­e­go­ry Inno­va­tion has an addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer: The 5 most inno­v­a­tive star­tups will par­tic­i­pate in the NEXT>IN SUSTAINABILITY event dur­ing the South by South­west Fes­ti­val (SXSW Dig­i­tal 2021) in mid-March, where the final­ists can present them­selves in front of an inter­na­tion­al jury and one start­up will gain a tick­et for SXSW 2022.

Greet­ing from the Fed­er­al Min­is­ter Dr. Gerd Müller

The Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (BMZ) wel­comes the competition’s focus on sus­tain­able star­tups in fash­ion, food and beau­ty seg­ments and in par­tic­u­lar the pur­suit of a clear sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy and pro­duc­tion accord­ing to high social and eco­log­i­cal stan­dards as a selec­tion cri­te­ri­on. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty along the entire sup­ply chain is an impor­tant con­cern of the BMZ, which it pro­motes, for exam­ple, in the tex­tiles sec­tor with the Tex­tiles Alliance or the Green Button.

FINALISTS

Mad­ness! More than 100 star­tups have applied and we are com­plete­ly over­whelmed by the wealth of great ideas and we are very sure that these star­tups will make our world a bet­ter place. The top 20 from all four cat­e­gories has been selected:

The win­ners will be announced in March.

SXSW

Join us for the QVC NEXT>IN SUSTAINABILITY start­up pitch finale dur­ing SXSW. The pub­lic debate on sus­tain­able con­sump­tion is here to stay and inter­est in a sus­tain­able lifestyle is grow­ing. Inno­va­tion is essen­tial to over­com­ing the chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with pro­tect­ing the cli­mate – and star­tups play an impor­tant part. The cat­e­go­ry ‘Inno­va­tion‘ takes their role as cat­a­lysts into account and pro­vides founders with an inter­na­tion­al plat­form enabling them to show­case ideas for a sus­tain­able future.

JURY

A jury of lead­ing experts with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in entre­pre­neur­ship, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, fash­ion and sales will be select­ing in March the star­tups with the best sus­tain­able prod­uct con­cepts in each category.

malimbaum
Mali M. Baum
CEO and founder WLOUNGE and Magda­Group Fond.
Gunther-Beger
Gun­ther Beger
Head of the BMZ depart­ment for Glob­al Health, Econ­o­my, Trade and Rur­al Development
carstenjuergens
Carsten Jür­gens
Vice Pres­i­dent Mer­chan­dise
QVC Ger­many
kaminski
Björn Kamin­s­ki
: Sus­tain­abil­i­ty expert at the Ger­man Star­tups Asso­ci­a­tion Bun­desver­band Deutsche Startups
barbarameier
Bar­bara Meier
BMZ Tex­tile Ambassador
dawidtomaszewski
Daw­id Tomaszewski
Fash­ion designer

Orga­niz­er

QVC is a lead­ing dig­i­tal retail com­pa­ny in Ger­many. Every day, mil­lions of shop­pers are engaged in a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery through an ever-chang­ing col­lec­tion of famil­iar brands and fresh new prod­ucts, from home and fash­ion to beau­ty, elec­tron­ics and jew­el­ry. Along the way, QVC con­nects with shop­pers via live dia­log, engag­ing sto­ries, inter­est­ing per­son­al­i­ties, and award-win­ning cus­tomer ser­vice. As part of the Qurate Retail Group – around 3,000 peo­ple at four sites – deliv­er a unique shop­ping expe­ri­ence to some 1.7 mil­lion cus­tomers in Ger­many and Aus­tria across three TV chan­nels, a web shop, shop­ping apps and social media plat­forms. NEXT>IN SUSTAINABILITY was con­ceived by QVC to pro­mote new sus­tain­able prod­uct concepts.

Umbrel­la Initiative

QVC has been work­ing with star­tups for decades. In fact, you could say they’re part of QVC‘s DNA because it also began life as a start­up in the US dur­ing the 1980s, and then ten years lat­er in Ger­many. Since then QVC has been com­mit­ted to giv­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty to extra­or­di­nary prod­ucts. In 2017 it found­ed the QVC NEXT ini­tia­tive to sup­port star­tups on their jour­ney to com­mer­cial suc­cess pri­mar­i­ly by help­ing them to mar­ket and sell their prod­ucts. QVC has already forged suc­cess­ful part­ner­ships with star­tups such as Dankebitte, Food­ist and Pau­dar. Now the search for inno­v­a­tive ideas and the sto­ries behind them con­tin­ues. As part of QVC NEXT, NEXT>IN SUSTAINABILITY is putting the focus on sus­tain­able prod­ucts for the first time.

Any ques­tions?

All answers can be found in our FAQ’s

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