New York Teens Create Clothing Company to Introduce Eco-friendly Millennial Maternity Wear

Two environmentally-conscious teens based in New York City, Christine Yan, 17, and Chelsea (Zi) Yan, 16, are one of this year’s competitors in the i.Invest National Youth Business Competition. The dynamic duo are the cofounders of ZigZag Mommy’s, a maternity clothing company focused on using eco-friendly materials in their products to bring reusability and sustainability to maternity wear, allowing mothers to save money and time while helping to improve the environment.

We spoke with Chelsea and Christine to learn more about the business venture:

Tell us about your business/product:

We want to reinvent the maternity wear industry with ZigZag Mommy. Our maternity apparel company is focused on using eco-friendly materials and adding reusability and sustainability to the maternity wear market. Our innovative product is an environmentally friendly maternity style that uses a zipper design on the side seam for contracting and expanding to accommodate the growing fetus. The product can be worn during pregnancy and through motherhood while solving the problems of poor circulation and limited usage period. The mothers can continue to wear the zip-up even after pregnancy, allowing them to save money for other necessities for the baby. They will no longer have to throw out their old maternity wear, which is both beneficial for the environment and community.

One added bonus of ZigZag Mommy is our devotion to sustainability. Our maternity wear is comprised of RPET, an organic material that is made with recycled water bottles. Since eco-friendly products are now gaining popularity, our sustainable material will appeal to these expecting mothers. With a handcrafted prototype, we conducted several modeling tests on various pregnant women to find the best sizing possible and have tweaked our design accordingly. With our focus on sustainability, we researched potential, eco-friendly materials, and determined RPET is the best fit for our standard and vision.

What inspired you to start ZigZag Mommy’s?

The inspiration came a few years ago when Chelsea's mother was pregnant. Although her mother needed maternity jackets to keep warm in the freezing winter, she refused to buy one and struggled to keep warm with her existing jacket. Chelsea came to understand that her reluctance to buy maternity wear because of the discomfort caused by elastic bands commonly used in maternity wear today. Not only that, but she felt it would not be used again after she was no longer pregnant. A consultation with her obstetrician proved that the elastic bands can result in poor circulation for the mother and baby. This experience led us to our signature zipper design. Our initial prototype was created by using one of Chelsea's old sweaters and installing zippers and fabric on the sides. The problems proposed by Chelsea's mother sparked Christine's interest as well. Although many types of maternity clothing are available on the market, they are often expensive and are differentiated by stages of pregnancy. Christine wanted to offer maternity clothing that changes as a woman's body does throughout her pregnancy. Together, we have perfected the zipper design and pitched it at multiple business competitions.

How will ZigZag Mommy’s impact the world?

Our target market is urban millennial moms who are willing to invest a little above market price for a healthier, more eco-friendly maternity wear alternative. Millennials have no problem trying new, innovative brands such as ZigZag Mommy. Millennials place value on the experience of their purchase and we believe motherhood should be an extra special one. We want to start with hosting special interaction events at parent classes and support groups offered through places such as NYU Langone’s Center for Perinatal Education and Lactation. As our startup grows, we want to sell our maternity wear at these parent support classes, who would serve as a distributing platform from us to the customer.

The movement to wear sustainable clothing has been going on for a long time, but we hope our design will inspire more mothers to join the movement. Sustainable consumption and production promote resource and energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, access to green jobs, and a better quality of life. ZigZag Mommy’s brings mothers together in their community to promote the ideal of sustainability around them and to the future generation. In addition to our sweater prototype, we will also expand our product line by investing in other designs to make our online shop the single destination for all prenatal needs, reducing the stress of shopping during pregnancy. We will follow the same concept of expandability and sustainability on outerwear, bottoms, dresses, shirts and possibly even more!

What are the next steps?

If ZigZag Mommy’s is funded, we plan on using the money to apply for a utility patent as our design satisfies the requirement for one. This patent will protect our idea in the fast fashion industry in order to have intellectual property protection. We will also use the funds to hire additional models to increase the preciseness of our measurements. Ultimately, most of the funding will be attributed to production costs.

To learn more about ZigZag Mommy’s, visit their website: https://zigzagmommy.weebly.com/. To mentor or offer support, email info@i-investcompetition.com.

Virginia Teen Entrepreneurs Create Mobile Platform to Connect Families with Elder's Health Data

Karthik Ramu (left), 17, of Aldie, VA along with their team member, Kushi Sethuram (right), 16, of Aldie, VA are one of this year's competitors in the i.Invest National Youth Business Competition. The team members are the cofounders of AmityConnections, a healthcare startup working to develop a mobile platform that will connect families with the real-time health data of their eldest members so that they may have the continuous ability to monitor their health conditions.

We spoke with Karthik and Kushi to learn more about the business venture:

Tell us about your startup:

AmityConnect is a mobile platform that connects family members with the health of their elders by aggregating real-time health data from smart medical devices onto a single platform accessible to family members at any given time, thus providing them with constant peace of mind. AmityConnect acts as an epicenter for numerous consumer-based smart medical devices that offer open application programming interfaces (e.g. FitBit, Apple Watch, Hexoskin, iHealth, etc.) to third-party developers/companies.

Who or what inspired you to start AmityConnections?

Kushi's grandmother, who had a history of blood clots and respiratory health conditions, would constantly reassure Kushi's mother that she was perfectly fine to not worry her. Her mother bought her grandmother a medical device intended to help monitor her respiratory conditions. Yet, without access to the health data being tracked along with the inability to constantly call her grandmother, who resided on the other side of the globe, the device was not much help. Around 3 years ago, Kushi's grandmother passed away. To this day, Kushi's mother lives with the agonizing thought that if she had more awareness of her mother's health, she could still be alive. Our growing concern for the health of our grandparents in India, coupled with the stories and sorrows from our problem interviews, fueled our goal at AmityConnections of offering proactive and connected healthcare solutions that offer constant peace of mind.

How will AmityConnections impact the world?

Today, family members are unable to connect regularly with the health of their elders due to demands of work, children, marriage, and other socioeconomic factors. Currently, 60% of elders, in the U.S alone, have two or more chronic health conditions (2017 National Health Interview Survey). AmityConnect provides our community's concerned family members with an opportunity to not only monitor, but take proactive and informed decisions regarding the health of their elderly based on aggregated health data. Consequently, the family members in our community can gain a constant peace of mind. AmityConnect can provide family members and caretakers the opportunity to stay connected with the health of their elders and make appropriate and proactive elder care decisions.

What are the next steps?

AmityConnections is seeking seed funding for app development, company formation, marketing, and initial company operations for the first three months. Using the current funds derived from non-equity investments, we have been developing a beta version of the AmityConnect platform. The beta version will be able to aggregate data from a single type of smart medical device (e.g. FitBit HR) and will validate the effectiveness of our data aggregation methods and the peace of mind it offers to family members. We, then, plan on channeling this validation to obtain the previously mentioned seed funding to begin the development of a complete AmityConnect platform that connects to a variety of smart medical devices and is accessible to our entire target market of family members within the U.S.

To learn more about AmityConnections, visit their website, https://amityconnections.com, or Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/AmityConnections. To mentor or offer support, email info@i-investcompetition.com.

High Schoolers Revolutionize Pickup Sports with Mobile App

High school seniors Kyle Beerbower, Kenneth Duran, Victor Carolino, and Andrew Politz—all from Los Angeles, California—are one of this year's competitors in the i.Invest National Youth Business Competition. They are the co-founders of RunItBack, a mobile app that gives every athlete the opportunity to play a recreational sport in an organized environment.

We spoke with the team to learn more about their business venture:

Tell us about your startup:

Our product, RunItBack, is a mobile app with a core function of organizing and mapping recreational sports games while also allowing users to participate in our community of athletes through our engaging features. The interactive map plots nearby available courts and allows players to choose a location, schedule or join a game, and post it on the map for others in the area to see and join. It also verifies suitable playing locations and allows them to compare different locations through star ratings and reviews from users. Users can view available courts with typically no wait and ongoing games in the area on our “Nearby” tab and can look at prearranged games, the weekly matchups for community-based leagues, and local tournaments on our “Scheduled” tab. After games are played, players input the results, rate each other, and vote on the game’s MVP. That data is then transferred and factored into game records, player “star ratings,” and local leaderboard rankings, which—in addition to our customizable user profiles, player highlights, the ability to make friends and form “squads,” and a multitude of prizes available to users—combine to create an inclusive, engaged community of athletes nationwide.

Who or what inspired you to start RunItBack?

The idea for RunItBack was born when we were unable to find an open court to simply shoot some hoops. We looked further into the issue and, with the help of Forbes’ article about sports inequity, discovered many shocking truths about the sports world that prompted us to devise solutions for the ongoing issues and to turn one of those ideas—RunItBack—into a reality.

How will RunItBack impact the world?

With the help of our technology, we seek to challenge outdated traditional standards and reinvent how sports are played for the better. Our product plans to address three main societal problems: sports inequity driven by the inaccessibility of sports for lower socioeconomic classes, the continuing decrease of overall sports participation, and the subtle replacement of physical activities with digital interaction. We will directly combat these issues by offering a free-to-use, accessible, universally available medium on which to play sports and reinvesting 10% of our profits to charities that work to eliminate sports inequity and empower marginalized youth. We also seek to incentivize our users to stay active and play sports through our prizes and competitive environment with one’s friends and local community that encourages consistent and habitual participation in recreational sports.

What are the next steps?

We are currently in the process of developing a user interface design and utilizing source code to develop the infrastructure of our app. We are also exploring crowdfunding options on Kickstarter and Indiegogo to assist with our initial expenses, including the marketing costs for our launch campaign, AWS cloud hosting service costs, and LLC filing and insurance costs.

In the meantime, we are ameliorating often neglected but vital aspects of our app. We are in the process of creating an introduction video for our app and a short film, and we are launching a giveaway soon to establish our social media presence. We are also constantly expanding our skill sets in the coding, marketing, and financial fields to ensure that we can create and launch the app in a smooth and straightforward manner. We have a long and difficult road ahead of us, but we are confident in our ability to ultimately fulfill our aspirations of becoming the future of pickup sports.

Learn more about the app at www.runitbackapp.com.

To mentor or offer support, email info@i-investcompetition.com.