Student's shopping frustrations spark international business collab

She struck the problem while working on an assignment for her degree – the new Bachelor of Commerce - Entrepreneurship and Innovation major. Caetana set forth with her new skills and is now working with successful businesspeople all over the globe to ensure your clothes fit.

For her assignment, Caetana had to identify a problem and pitch a solution to a panel of experienced entrepreneurs.

“I noticed that one of the biggest problems with fashion was size guides. They’re quite inaccurate and when you purchase a product online you wouldn’t quite get the same sizing that you expected,” Caetana said.

“It’s not only jeans, it’s everything. New Zealand has a very limited retail market, so people go online. They’ve got to guess their size or work around an inaccurate size guide.”

Caetana’s idea is a personalised online shopping platform that combines AI insights with user measurements to help people find the right clothes. She hopes to reduce sizing frustrations and provide a better online shopping experience for everyone.

Her sizing solution was a hit and particularly impressed business strategist David Fleming, who was invited to participate on the judging panel. David resonated with Caetana’s struggle and offered to help her make her business a reality.

As a Senior Strategy Implementation Partner at Strategize, David had the experience and connections Caetana needed. The pair got to work and have been working to create a successful and sustainable business plan from the initial concept.

“Her idea really stood out to me as something unique,” David said. “I’m not aware of anything like this in the market and it needs an entrepreneur to explore it.”

“I’m not a tech expert. I reached out to someone I knew in Melbourne. They put us in contact with someone in Singapore. They all agreed this is a product that could go to market. Now we meet every few weeks and are all providing Caetana with advice of what to do next.”

Lincoln’s Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation is designed with out-of-the-box thinking and practicality in mind. Creative solutions and collaborative partnerships are encouraged throughout the course. It’s a fresh take on commerce that David wants to see more of.

He hopes many more brilliant innovators come from the programme. He was very happy to offer mentoring to Caetana and said it was a way to give back to young future business owners.

When Caetana isn’t studying or working on her new clothing platform, she’s brainstorming other problems that she could help solve. She hopes to help others kickstart their ideas one day.

Have your own business idea, but don’t know where to start? Check out our Bachelor of Commerce - Entrepreneurship and Innovation Major. You’ll learn how to solve modern problems and take advantage of any opportunity that comes your way.

Want to hear more from David and Caetana? Check out our video interview with them on Instagram here.