The objective of our entry is to fund a project where the Sunglass Fix Pty Ltd’s can recycle its by-products (waste) into an innovative and profitable product. Lens offcuts from our lens manufacturing business will be melted down and used to form sunglass frames made from this recycled material.

By recycling our own polyamide lens waste which would otherwise go to landfill, Sunglass Fix can expand its market range by offering these recycled frames. The business wants to improve its environmental footprint by reusing its 2,400 litres of lens offcuts produced each month. Recycling the offcuts into frames will allow our customers to get a frame made from their own lens waste. This will create a renewable circular effect within the business, further benefiting the business' environmental impact and reputation in the sunglass / lens replacement industry.

How the entry will work / be produced:
We will create a simplistic, timeless design for three major sunglass frame styles; sport, casual men and casual women. The design styles will be drawn from the sunglass fixes database to produce and deliver high quality and functional frame designs that meet our customers desires and aren't likely to be affected by fashion cycles. (estimated cost per design $5,000). We will then convert the designs into injection moulds. While we have tested our waste material further testing to ensure frame strength and quality will be required. (estimated cost per mould $17,500). This is our entry's main risk as it costs a large sum of money to get to a stage viable for testing. However, we are working with an injection mould company to incorporate our material into an existing mould during one of their test runs to get a rough idea of the material's effectiveness before mould development. If material is deemed adequate we can produce a frame for roughly $3.00 when in full production. Therefore to release our entry to the market we will need roughly $105,000 (AUD) for three frames including packaging, labour and initial marketing.

Marketability / Application:
The frames will be sold on the Sunglass Fix’s established website which gets roughly 2 million visitors yearly. We also have 500,000+ customers on our contact lists and are still growing our business by 25% per annum. Through marketing sustainable sunglass frame on the Sunglass Fix’s website, and a variety of other marketing channels we can generate between 10,000 to 20,000 sales per year in a most likely scenario and upwards of 45,000 customers yearly in a best case scenario.

It is estimated that the project will cost 105K AUD to launch but our overall unit cost with packaging should be under $5 AUD. Sunglass Fix will benefit by getting the lens sale while revenue from frame sales will pay back the start-up cost and eventually bring a return on investment (ROI). With the right funding this entry could be implemented within 9 months and start producing a positive ROI by 2025.

Thank you for considering our application,
The Sunglass Fix - Development Team.