The call for design-based consumer goods 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 finally improve the competitiveness of European SMEs in world markets. Moreover, there is an important potential to replicate the innovations not only in participating SMEs but also across the supply-chain while generating important spill-over effects.

Design-based consumer goods SMEs are diverse and cover value chains composed of  design, product development, manufacturing and distribution operations of various sectors, including for example textiles, clothing, leather and fur products, footwear, bags and accessories, sports goods, games and toys, interior home decoration products (e.g. furniture, sanitary products, floor, wall and window coverings, table and kitchen ware, glassware), spectacles, watches, jewellery, various cosmetic and beauty products, etc.

The European design-based consumer goods SMEs rely on creativity, design and best available technologies. Many promising solutions for the industry may already exist at prototype stage but often they do not reach the market due to commercialisation obstacles and residual risks linked to scaling-up. They may also result from the fragmented structure of the activities involved, constituted typically by a large number of SMEs, with difficulties to attract the necessary skills and finance (“valley of death”).

The Call will support projects of SMEs:

• Deploying novel 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.

The Call will support breakthrough products services and innovative solutions technically ready for market uptake that reduce the time to market and remove obstacles to wider application (i.e. barriers for market uptake).

Eligibility criteria are set in Section 6 of the call: applicant organisations must be legal entities. They can be fully or partly public or private bodies; private bodies must be properly constituted and registered under national law. The call is open to SMEs and other legal entities. SMEs may participate alone or in a consortium.

Source: EASME