Community Updates

Sustainable Brands Seeks Entrepreneurs for Startup Business Competition

Sustainable Brands® recently opened submissions for its internationally recognized startup business competition Sustainable Brands Innovation Open (SBIO). Presented and sponsored for a fifth year by Target, the competition culminates at SB’16 San Diego, June 6-9, with venture finalists presenting their early operational plans to business leaders and investors in the Sustainable Brands community.

Published 8 years ago | About a 2 minute read

Sustainable Brands, known for bringing together diverse groups of business leaders with innovative and disruptive plans to embed sustainability into their companies, will accept entries for SBIO until March 25. Startup ventures looking to gain exposure for their pioneering consumer products and/or products/services that support existing corporations in achieving their sustainability-led programs are encouraged to submit an entry.

Details and timing as follows:

Startups in their post-launch phase with early operating metrics and/or a proven Beta/prototype to share are encouraged to apply before March 25.
A panel of expert judges including investors, entrepreneurs and brand merchants will evaluate entries based on creativity, team quality, economic scalability and level of disruptive innovation. Ten semi-finalists will be selected by early April.
Short list of entries will be featured for a public poll during the week of April 4 on www.SustainableBrands.com in order to select an 11th semi-finalist.
All 11 semi-finalists will be given exhibit space for 3 days at SB’16 San Diego and will pitch their business plans to the full SB’16 San Diego audience on June 7.
Target Award: The winner of the SBIO’16 Target Award will receive a $1,000 Target gift card and a three-hour consultation session from members of Target’s Sustainability, Merchandising, Marketing and Strategy & Innovation teams to strengthen the winner’s business model.
Target Award: An additional amount totaling $10,000 will be donated by the Target Foundation on behalf of the winner up to two charities selected by the winner.

“The SB Innovation Open gathers entrepreneurs from diverse disciplines that go beyond the innovative and into the disruptive,” states Riley Scherer, Sustainable Brands’ Innovation Open Coordinator. “The exposure that startups gain from participating is not only beneficial to their own endeavors, but can potentially lead to the creation of partnerships with more established brands in attendance. Target has such a rich history of design and innovation integrated into their business and we are grateful to have them supporting the entrepreneurs in this competition.”

To submit an entry and learn about past finalists, visit the SB Innovation Open 2016 web page at www.SB16sd.com/innovation-open. Further information about SB’16 San Diego can be found on the conference website at www.SB16sd.com.