Innovation

Unbox the Dress is an innovative platform made to empower women and recycle beautiful, expensive wedding dresses. The platform was created for women who wanted to honor their loved ones by incorporating their dresses into important life milestones. These milestones include weddings, christenings and family heirlooms to be kept for decades. Unbox the Dress helps women decide how to redesign their dress by first starting with a Style Quiz. The quiz functions as a way to generate ideas about what you can do with the dress and the best ways for each woman to utilize the fabric available.

The quiz starts by asking questions that help to paint a picture of what the current dress looks like. Questions include: what decade the dress is from, the condition of the dress, the length of the dress, what type of sleeves the dress has, and if the dress has any unique features such as covered buttons, lace, or an oversized bow. Once submitting the form, the website details how much new fabric will be needed in order to construct the new item.

After submitting the quiz, the user has the opportunity to contact the company to further discuss her future desires for new wedding essentials or family Heirlooms. Overall, the innovation is a very straightforward process that allows families and loved ones to honor each other and honor their mothers.

Inspiration

In 2015, Grace and her mother were spending time going through her grandmother's home, where they stumbled upon family heirlooms and her grandmother's wedding dress. They started to discuss how sentimental family heirlooms come to be and what typically happens to them after their single showcase. They admired the amount of time and attention that goes into picking the perfect dress. For many women, this dress symbolizes “the start of their own family, traditions and becoming a mother.” Many women save their wedding dresses with hopes of passing them on to daughters or even granddaughters. In reality, these dresses are later seen as being “out-of-date,” or a different style dress is desired. This leads to beautiful and expensive gowns being left in boxes in attics or basements for years on end.

Oftentimes, after these dresses go untouched, they end up being thrown away for a variety of reasons. Seeing landfills become home to these beautiful, individually selected gowns is wasteful and heartbreaking.

Grace saw the opportunity to create a sustainability-based, online platform for women to honor their mothers, grandmothers or other loved ones who pass down their wedding gowns. By utilizing these gowns, women have the opportunity to share such a special moment with the elder women in their lives whom they love dearly.

Overall impact

The innovation has several overall impacts, including: reduced waste and consumption, enhanced wedding experiences, and preserving the dying tradition of sewing. Bridal dresses are often ordered months in advance. A lot of these gowns are handmade in third-world countries, where working conditions are very poor. The fabrics are often made in the same type of working conditions.

The reduction of waste and consumption is becoming a huge opportunity as we continue to create more and more, often disregarding what already exists. America globally is often stereotyped for this never ending process of creation, consumption, and ultimately disposition. Unbox the Dress provides an alternative to this cycle, ironically enhancing the experience though recycling dresses.

A wedding is simply an accumulation of experiences, ultimately leading to a milestone of someone’s life. To this definition, Grace has provided a way to enhance the overall wedding experience, specifically the selection of the wedding essentials. Heritage has, and always will be, a significant detail through this journey. Unbox the Dress provides another outlet where the heritage can be embedded into the process.

The preservation of the sewing trade in America is one that Grace was very proud to emphasize. As globalization continues to shrink the world, we often lose a sense of the talent local professionals possess, even in today's age. Unbox the Dress utilizes local seamstresses throughout the Cleveland area, offering the opportunity to display their craft.

Business benefit

The innovation benefits the business by enabling substantial value to be created through the process. The significant value is due to the customer supplying the majority of the fabrics, while Unbox the Dress simply supplies small amounts of additional fabric and labor, resulting in an entirely new product. In the Bridal Collection, the most expensive items are robes that can be worn during the getting ready portion of the wedding day. These robes range from $238 to $534.

Unbox the Dress currently has two primary employees that consist of Grace and her mother. They work with five to six ‘Graceful Sewers’ in the northeast Ohio area. The co-owner of Unbox the Dress, Grace, mentioned that she hires women ‘Graceful Sewers’ and that she takes pride in empowering women. She stated that she has geared her company towards being women-centric. The women with whom she partners have been in the industry for years and are the type of women that she will continue to hire.

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Social and environmental benefit

Unbox the Dress has been able to benefit both society and the environment. They have been able to successfully benefit society by allowing family heirlooms to be repurposed and to live on for more generations. These new products allow family members to create deeper bonds. Whether it be a wedding dress that has been redesigned into a robe, veil, flower girl dress or a christening gown, each part of the family can gain value from these unique designs. Unbox the Dress also substantially benefits the environment. By upcycling elaborate fabrics, Unbox the Dress is keeping fabrics from ending up in landfills.

Interview

Grace Rojek, Founder & Co-Owner of Unbox the Dress