The most sought-after item of clothing among homeless people is socks, but associations don’t collect them. Bonpied is here to put things right! By offering a range of socks made in France that are both comfortable and sport original patterns, Sandrine Vergnory-Mion (EDHEC Grande Ecole, 1994) gives customers the chance to make a tangible impact in favour of the homeless.
Tell us about your project. How did it come about?
For years I’ve been doing the rounds meeting with isolated homeless people as part of my work with Protection Civile. What we realised on the streets is that socks are the item of clothing most requested. But associations don’t collect them and so not enough of them are distributed. There is a real imbalance between supply and demand. Having talked about it with friends working as textile designers, I came up with the idea of generating more sock donations based on a Buy-One-Give-One model.
What drives your motivation?
What motivates me is the ability to make a concrete improvement to the health of homeless people: having healthy feet is essential when you have to make your way around the city to access the different resources available.
Socks are also light and take up little space so they’re not a burden for the homeless.
How has your experience at EDHEC or with the network of graduates helped you achieve this project?
The broad education I received at EDHEC gave me the self-confidence to become an entrepreneur.
I am counting on the network of graduates to help me finalise the ongoing crowdfunding campaign on Ulule: https://fr.ulule.com/bonpied/
For every pair of socks pre-ordered, another pair will be donated to the homeless!
Chat is your initial assessment of this entrepreneurial adventure? Do you have any advice for others from EDHEC interested in becoming entrepreneurs?
It’s actually a bit early to draw any conclusions but I’m very happy to have been able to form a team who complement one another with my friends from the textile industry as well as a developer (who works on the website). We are still lacking strong digital marketing skills or a traffic manager for the forthcoming website.
My first advice for a B2C project is to start putting together a database of the email addresses of anyone who shows an interest early on (in market studies for example).
And take the time to find people whose skill sets complement your own before you set up your business: you travel faster alone, but further together!
What's next? What are your expectations from the community of EDHEC graduates?
The next stage is to smash the goal for our pre-sales campaign! We have already reached more than 80% of our target, but the more we (pre)sell, the more socks we can donate! We can’t wait to launch production so we can donate as much as possible through the association Sock en Stock (based in Lille) and Protection Civile Paris Seine.
I’m counting on the EDHEC Alumni community to contribute hugely to the campaign and share the info on their social networks: https://fr.ulule.com/bonpied/
More info :
Facebook : Bonpied.FR
Instagram : @bonpied_FR
Twitter : @Bonpied_FR
Email : contact@bonpied.eu
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