Call for proposals: Supporting the production of design-based consumer goods

This Call, offering support to design-based consumer goods projects, aims to shorten the time-to-market of innovative solutions, remove obstacles to wider application of creative solutions, create or enlarge markets for related products (or services) and improve the competitiveness of European SMEs in world markets.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) producing design-based consumer goods are diverse and cover value chains composed of design, product development, manufacturing and distribution operations of various sectors. These sectors include textiles, clothing, leather and fur products, footwear, bags and accessories, sports goods, games and toys, interior home decoration products, spectacles, watches, jewellery, and cosmetic and beauty products.

European SMEs producing these goods rely on creativity, design and the best available technologies. Many promising solutions for the industry may already exist, but often they do not reach the market due to commercialisation obstacles and the risks linked to scaling-up. This may also result from the fragmented structure of the activities involved, constituted typically by a large number of SMEs, who face difficulties attracting appropriate skills and finance (the so-called 'valley of death').

This Call will support SME projects that:

• deploy new products, services or solutions through first application, market uptake or replication of 'state of the art' technologies and creative solutions, which
  • have already been technically demonstrated, but
  • due to scaling up and/or commercialisation risks need incentives to penetrate the market.

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