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WORTH PARTNERSHIP PROJECT APPLICATIONS FOR THE SECOND CALL
Deadline: Oct 24, 2018  
CALL EXPIRED

 Entrepreneurship and SMEs
 Start Up
 Industrial Textile Manifacturing
 Manufacturing 2.0
 Creative Industries
 Design
 Fashion
 COSME
 Industrial Design
 Graphic design

WORTH Overview

WORTH Partnership Project fosters connection opportunities for SMEs and designers supported by EASME to encourage partnerships from fashion and lifestyle industry to:

- Enhance competitiveness.

- Integrate creativity, design and innovative technologies in SMEs.

- Foster new, innovative or high-added value products developed in collaboration between designers and manufacturers or technology companies.

Sectoral and geographical coverage encompasses creative-minds, designers, artists, crafters, start-ups, and SMEs from EU and COSME associated countries from sectors such as fashion, textile, jewellery, footwear, leather, fur, furniture, home decoration, accessories.

WORTH Partnership Project will support the selected innovative partnerships through:

Financial support to develop products or prototypes with high-added value and profitability in terms of innovation.

- A tailor-made coaching programme on either technical or soft skills to elevate the relevance of projects and increase their capabilities.

- Facilitating market-positioning and professional links between members of partnerships from the different rounds of projects and other key players by organizing networking activities and attendance at relevant events to showcase the product/prototype developed. This will entail facilitating professional links between project partners and other players, such as buyers, retailers, financial intermediaries, investors, and media, tailored to the specific needs of each partnership to trigger further potential activities, business cooperation and access to finance.

Facilitating access to markets by identifying and organising participation of each of the partnerships in at least two relevant events to showcase the results of the partnerships.

Intellectual property rights organization and guidance.

 

 

Open Call

The WORTH Open Call is seeking applications targeting a combination of designers, SMEs manufacturers, start-ups and technology firms to develop innovative projects in fashion and lifestyle sectors for the reinforcement of the sectors innovation, competitiveness & internationalisation.

 

(PICTURE NOT AVAILABLE )

 

By applying for the WORTH Open Call, your project partnership will compete to get the following type of support:

1. Financial support up to 10.000€ (per project) to 150 awarded partnerships projects.

2. Tailor-made coaching to participants on either technical or soft skills to elevate the relevance of projects and increase capabilities of the partners.

3. Facilitation of tailored professional links and market positioning between projects partners and other players (buyers, retailers, financial intermediaries, investors and media) by organizing networking activities, international events and providing links with key stakeholders. With the aim to trigger further potential activities, business cooperation and access to finance.

4. Facilitating access to market by identifying and organising participation of each of the partnerships in at least two relevant exhibitions or events to showcase results of partnerships.

The standard projects’ duration is set at 9 months. An extraordinary 3 months might be requested by partnerships and subject to the Steering Board assessment by considering the complexity and the TRL of the project.

The WORTH Open Call will have several cut-off dates.

 

The WORTH Call opens on 18th September 2017 with the first cut-off date 31st of December 2017 and the second cut-off date 24th of October 2018.

 

Who can Apply?

ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS

WORTH Project is about collaboration between talented fashion designers, creative people, manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) and technology firms willing to enter into a partnership to develop innovative products.

We invite creatives, designers, crafters, start-ups and Small Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) from fashion and lifestyle industries including fashion, textile, jewellery, footwear, accessories, furniture, fur, leather and home decoration.

In order to apply, potential partners must be eligible individually, the partnership must also fulfill some eligibility criteria in order to get through all stages of the evaluation process.

The following eligibility criteria must be individually met:

Applicants must be a SME (under de EU definition), a start-up, self-employed or professional freelancers legally established as a business under the national law and based in an EU member state (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom) or a COSME associated country (Iceland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia),

• Applicants must be active in an eligible WORTH industry sector,

• SMEs companies must be legally established for at least six months prior to the date of the application deadline.

• Self-employed applicants must be legally established according to the laws of each participating country from the signature of the Grant Agreement and during the whole duration of the partnership project. For self-employed applicants, it is not required the legal establishment six months prior to the date of the application deadline.

• Applicants must have completed the application form in full conformity.

 

The following eligibility criteria must be met by the partnership:

• The WORTH Call is open to partnerships formed by, at least, two legal entities which must come from different sectors. (Maximum 3 partners per proposal)

• Partners must come from at least 2 different EU member states or COSME associated countries.

Research organisations (research centres, universities, etc.) can participate in a partnership project but cannot be the lead partner.

• Partnerships’ proposals must deliver an innovative, cutting-edge product in the fashion and lifestyle industry value chain.

• No Technology Readiness Level (TRL) is required. The selection will be based on the excellence of the proposed idea to address the identified challenge, the maturity and the management capacity of the team to drive the project to the market, and the potential of the proposed solution to scale-up to the international market.

• Already existing products without a clear advance or innovation beyond the state-of-art will be rejected.

• Project activities that have already been funded or are being funded by other funding instruments will be rejected. Double funding is not allowed.

• Partners cannot be involved in more than one partnership project proposal per call.

 

How to Apply?

1st STAGE

All interested partners will be able to submit their application through the WORTH Platform at any time during the open call. Interested applicants will fill in the online registration form. Registration form must be complete in English.

Partners can register even if they do not have a specific project idea or an ally to submit the project partnership proposal. The Consortium can advise on improving the already-conceived idea and find the suitable partner to work with.

 

(PICTURE NOT AVAILABLE)

 

After the submission, the eligibility check takes place and applicants are informed by email about their eligibility/ineligibility, in 5 working days at maximum.

 

Project Development Phase

After this 1st stage, the eligible applicants will gain access to the Gallery, as well as they will get full access to other participants’ profiles.

This is also an ongoing procedure, and as shown in the diagram above, if a partner misses the opportunity to form a partnership and submit a project, the profile remains active on the Gallery and it keeps searching for partners for the next cut-off. Same way, if a partnership is formed on-time to catch a cut-off date but finally loses it, of course, keeps active on drafting its idea for the next cut-off date.

 

2nd STAGE

Partnerships are formed at this stage, as well as the co-development of the partnership project proposal. Fillable pdf templates will be available to be downloaded by applicants. The application will consist in submitting the following application package:

a) The project proposal form (a project proposal model and guidelines are available in the helpdesk area).

b) A project dossier (as an annex including sketches, drawings or moodboards and a preliminary business plan of the project - 3 pages maximum in pdf).

c) Portfolio of applicants (a free-form portfolio in pdf – 3 pages maximum).

d) Video (recording guidelines are available in the helpdesk area)

Evaluation Process

The evaluation process is widely explained in Annex: Selection Criteria

Administrative Duties

Selected Partnerships will become WORTH beneficiaries.

Contracts with beneficiaries will be managed by the Consortium. The administrative tasks for the beneficiaries, including activity reporting obligations and related documents will be provided during the partnership agreements formalization.

 

Preparation of Grant Agreement

The lead partner of the selected partnerships will be requested to sign a Grant Agreement with the consortium leader (AITEX). The main objective of this agreement is to validate financial and technical operational capacity from the partners and to establish rules for receiving support from the WORTH project.

 

Partnerships will have to submit proof of:

• Legal existence: Legal Entity Form accompanied with the supporting documents (registration, tax certificates). Legal entity form can be found here.

• Bank Account information: Financial Identification Form. Financial Identification form can be found here.

• Founders IDs

• Existence of a Consortium Agreement between the participants

 

The WORTH consortium may request official translation of documents submitted in a language that cannot be processed by the consortium partners. Languages that can be processed: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Greek, Romanian, and Catalan.

Funding Scheme

The following payment scheme will apply:

- The first 20% will be provided 30 days after the invoice submission.

- Based on the positive evaluation of the midterm report, another 40% will be paid 30 days after issuing the second invoice.

- The remaining 40% payment will be carried out following the formal approval of the final report and corresponding work validation by the consortium and 30 days after issuing the third invoice.

- Funds will be disbursed to the lead partner.

 

Results and Deliverables

The partnership work plan will be defined alongside the assigned mentor during the kick-off meeting. Reporting to be delivered through the platform is:

- Monthly report (including monthly progress and problems encountered).

- Mid-term report (including technical sketches with specifications and drawings of the product).

- Final report (including the final prototype and related documentation).  

 

No cost reporting will be necessary.

Services Delivery Model

All the selected Partnerships entitled to receive funding and Innovation Support Services will be assigned a mentor, who will guide them through the whole process.

 

The assigned mentor will work with each partnership and recommend the most suitable services, provided either by Consortium or external providers, to overcome each project challenges or difficulties.

 

Other Considerations

Data Protection

WORTH partners are committed to protect and respect applicants' privacy. The personal data collected in the context of the present Open Call will be processed in accordance with the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC in regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Applicants files will be retained in WORTH archives until the end of the project activities for which the applicants submitted a proposal idea.

The information you provide will be retained in compliance with the regulation (EC) 45/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2000. It will be entered and held securely on the WORTH Consortium computer systems and online databases. It is possible that the information we collect from you could be transferred, stored and processed in a destination outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) during our processing. By submitting your information, you agree to this transfer, storing and processing, even where the country or territory in question does not maintain similar data protection standards.

WORTH Consortium is working with partners to provide enhancement to the WORTH PARTNERSHIP PROJECT through the European Union, the information you provide will be used for the purposes of assessing or managing your application, and for other purposes connected with the WORTH PARTNERSHIP project and your participation in it. The information may also be shared with project partners’ sponsors and agents. We will retain your information on our files and contact you about other projects we may run that we believe could be of interest to you. If you do not wish for your information to be retained for these purposes, and would not like to be contacted about other projects, you may let us know using the email privacy@worthproject.eu.

It is possible to exercise your access, rectify, cancel or opposition rights through the private profile of the entity (delete profile) or by contacting WORTH data controller by sending an email to privacy@worthproject.eu

Useful Documents (available on the helpdesk area of the website):

- Annex: Selection criteria WORTH Call

- Project proposal template

- Project proposal model

- Project design portfolio

- Video recording guidelines

- FAQ

- Grant agreement model

- Consortium agreement model

- Partnerships’ reporting templates

Questions

Please check out the FAQs section in the WORTH website.

For further enquiries, you can contact us via live chat on the Website platform or helpdesk@worthproject.eu

The mere fact of participating in this Open Call means that the participants know and fully accepts the present rules.

 



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