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Remade is a project that we have been doing
in our program over 10 years and, essentially,
it is intercepting industrial scrap
before it heads to the landfill and
creating marketable products from that scrap.
We’ve added an entrepreneurial factor
to this project where the students must
create 20 of these objects and then
retail them at a local venue
The first assignment is dumpster diving
and the students must bring in half a dozen
different types of materials and we spend
a week brainstorming on what the potential
products could spring from these materials.
You name it, we’ve seen it.
I tell the students, ‘Go to a rope factory
and see what’s in their garbage,
and if there’s hundreds of pieces of six inches,
six inch pieces of rope, you know,
what can you do with that?’
There have been many products created
throughout the life of this project,
some of which have won awards.
In fact, one student has actually created a
small cottage industry on her recycled
car vinyl upholstery which she has turned
into beautiful handbags.
What’s amazing about the Remade Project,
which I also call ‘trash to cash,’
is that students will literally take an idea
and fabricate a product, you know,
from concept to store shelf.
They will have the full experience of the
product development process and,
although it’s a short time frame,
by keeping the products simple they
literally are able to do this entire process
within a quarter which is ten weeks
and usually less than that.
So they learn, number one,
material acquisition: how to get a
constant, steady supply of materials;
how to fabricate their product, not to mention
the whole design process of creatively coming
up with an idea, but how to fabricate it,
coming up with a manufacturing plan;
having the quality assurance or quality control
over their products: it will actually function
and the ultimate customer will be happy
with the use of it.
The students also learn a little bit about marketing.
Each student must come up with a name,
a hangtag and a little story about their product,
which is conveyed at the point of purchase.
So, all these factors, including pricing,
many of these actually new to the students,
although they are all expert shoppers and have
all been in retail environments as the customer,
now they are seeing the other side of the
counter, if you will, and experiencing, you know,
‘What do customers like?
What are the trends today?
What can inspire a customer to pay for
this object that was designed from trash?’
Most of the students have been very successful
in completing that assignment and have,
you know, many stories can be told about
pricing something to high or too low
or missing the mark, missing the target market,
not really creating a product that anyone wants.
And so, because of the nature of the retail
environment, the relationship we have,
we have been able to adjust things mid-course,
so students can change the prices, students can
maybe alter the product a little bit to make it
more marketable etcetera.
So it’s a great experience, again,
from concept to store shelf and making that,
essentially the American dream in a
mini version that incorporates sustainability,
making that happen.