{"id":165691,"date":"2020-02-26T19:36:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T19:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/the-interview-eva-vucheva-and-boryana-uzunova-founders-kool-and-conscious\/"},"modified":"2021-08-06T12:04:49","modified_gmt":"2021-08-06T12:04:49","slug":"the-interview-eva-vucheva-and-boryana-uzunova-founders-kool-and-conscious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/the-interview-eva-vucheva-and-boryana-uzunova-founders-kool-and-conscious\/","title":{"rendered":"The Interview: Eva Vucheva and Boryana Uzunova, founders, Kool and Konscious"},"content":{"rendered":"
In today\u2019s fashion marketplace \u201cgreenwashing\u201d or \u201cgreen sheen\u201d has become a tsunami of confusing labels. Consumers are drowning in \u201corganic\u201d that, and \u201csustainable\u201d this, while brands, many far from authentic, jump on the eco\/environmental bandwagon. Knowing who to trust, and, simply, what it all means, offers up a gap for a curated marketplace specialising in fashion products that are trying to be less damaging. Enter Kool and Konscious<\/a>, or KKompany, to give a little bit of reassurance to consumers looking for truly greener clothes and accessorises.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Established in May 2019 in Hong Kong by Eva Vucheva and Boryana Uzunova, both from Bulgaria, it has recently closed its first financing round and turnover is projected to hit \u20ac1million<\/strong> by the end of 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are three co-founders, me, Eva and Ufuk [Ufuk Inci]. Ufuk and I started the company in Hong Kong as a spin-off idea of a technology we have been working on. Eva joined in later, as we were relocating the business to Europe,\u201d says Uzunova.<\/p>\n Vucheva says: \u201cIn addition, part of the company is owned by our incredible investors, Eleven Ventures, who backed us early on.\u201d<\/p>\n Their backgrounds are in fashion and tech. \u201cKool and Konscious has been a natural continuation of the technology my team and I had been building<\/strong> for nearly five years out of my university in Hong Kong \u2013 MorphX. MorphX is a technology that facilitates on-demand production in a cost-efficient and timely manner, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the need of mass-producing pieces that will go straight to landfills,\u201d says Uzunova.<\/p>\n \u201cI have been developing e-commerce and digital products for the last 15 years,\u201d says Vucheva. \u201cI was part of the founding team of the biggest fashion marketplace in CEE - Central and Eastern Europe \u2013 [Fashion Days Group] later sold to Naspers. At the time I left it, the company was grossing \u20ac70million.<\/p>\n \u201cI have come to realise first-hand the effects of consumerism on the environment and on us as human beings. I started taking an interest in circular and shared economy,<\/strong> but it took several years until the KK found me,\u201d she says smiling.\u00a0\u201cIn the meantime, in 2015, I started a data management company, servicing companies such as Rakuten, eBay and PayPal, which I still own, and which gives us a great advantage in the current project,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I entered university in Hong Kong, I started to come across fashion industry facts that were truly shocking,\u201d says Uzunova. \u201cMaking a real change to fashion\u2019s impact had to touch on every single level of the value chain:<\/strong> from how we grow crops, to how we process textiles and produce garments. No less important was how do we dispose of the millions of tons of textiles produced each year?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea for Kool And Konscious started to emerge. We started approaching the most innovative material-science, dying and packaging companies,<\/strong> as well as the direct to consumer brands from around the globe that were founded with the mission of being kind to the planet.<\/p>\n