Yodomo's journey

The launch

Yodomo officially launched in 2018 following a successful crowdfunding round with Seedrs. From here, we developed the first iteration of our web platform, Yodomo.co, which served to promote creative upskilling. We worked with makers whose practices represented a wide range of crafts, skills, and backgrounds to produce high-quality creative online courses.

Sustainability and reuse were already high on the agenda as we partnered with Hiut Denim and Offset Warehouse for reuse materials in our kits, as well as makers whose philosophies prioritised mending.

Steady growth in making

Growing our maker and customer base, Yodomo facilitated workshops and events to help nurture creativity and mental well-being, for corporate clients and events such as Art in the Park, Also Festival, The Future of Craft, New Designers, Clerkenwell Design Week and SAMPLE Christmas Market.

Yodomo was also selected to take part in the We in Social Tech accelerator programme, and awarded Seedling of the Year by Seedrs.

Following a second crowdfunding round with Seedrs, Yodomo set out to grow its live events revenue with a focus on corporate wellbeing.

A busy lockdown

2020 was a busy one for us, despite transitioning to a work-from-home model in the wake of COVID-19.

As people continued being stuck at home, we were able to reach even more people engaging with crafts through lockdowns. Makers lost income from live workshops so with funding from Arts Council England, we began our Making a Living Programme for creative professionals, with tips on how to adapt their craft-based businesses to an online landscape.

We also launched Made in Hackney Wick for creatives to develop digital skills, in partnership with the HWFI Creative Enterprise Zone. Along with this, we supported Let’s Craft, an initiative by Crafts Council to help bring creativity into the homes of children across the country, with 1,000 papercraft kits.

At the same time, UK Government launched an investment programme of £22.5 million in five new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) interdisciplinary circular economy centres, to move the UK towards a circular economy and demonsrtatring its pledge to support research in this important area. Yodomo was 1 of 11 SMEs who joined the Cambridge University’s Social Venture Programme to investigate reuse of materials.

From making to materials

2021 opened with a new partnership with #Knitformentalhealth, a charity where volunteers sell their hand knitted goods, with the revenue donated to mental health charities across the UK.

Following this, we officially became a social venture, a way of formalising our commitments as a responsible business. It felt–and still feels–right, to be driven by purpose and positive societal impact.

All the while, our cohort of makers grew, aided by our hugely popular Making a Living Programme.

With many micro businesses launching off of its back, Yodomo’s director Sophie Rochester took the experience gained and lessons learned from developing Yodomo into Making a Living: How to Craft Your Business, a book that won the Highly Commended award at the Business Book Awards as well as the Creative Book Awards.

We also set out to investigate the viability of an improved technological approach to reuse of materials, exploring better data management, traceability, technological approaches, systems thinking and education/behavioural change to improve the accountability of onward uses of ‘waste’ materials. This was prompted by several discussions we had with our maker community, where access to sustainable materials as a main concern.

Yodomo Circular Hub launches

Following market research into our audiences and the reuse of materials, we worked with General Assembly to create a prototype on how Yodomo.co might be able to grow its impact in the circular economy through the introduction of a reuse of materials.

After a successful bid for £50,000 from the London Borough of Hackney Council, we began our pilot project for the Yodomo Circular Hub, taking on the logic of the circular economy in order to reimagine how surplus waste can be reintroduced as reuse materials for the many talented professional makers in Hackney and beyond.

The launch of the Yodomo Circular Hub at Hackney City Farm was hugely successful, the perfect foundation for building up our product to benefit the environment, the economy and community.

Transformative Technologies and Fish Island

Yodomo was invited to expand its circular economy initiatives by exploring new UK systems to reduce textile waste, which was supported by a Transformative Technologies grant from Innovate UK and UKRI. Our research project, Designing a Textile Waste Service to Increase Material Reuse through Textile Identification Technology and Enhanced Systems, allowed us to collaborate extensively with the UK industry. Through this project, we introduced cutting-edge textile identification technology from Matoha Science into our processes and applied systems-thinking research to drive innovation.

During this time, we also relocated to Fish Island in East London to run a pilot Textile Reuse Hub at The Trampery as a demonstrator project for Hackney Wick & Fish Island Community Development Trust's circular economy initiative ReRoute. Here, we ran the Sustainable Young Makers programme, which provided mentorship, space, and resources for young makers from Hackney to bring their designs and brands to the next level.

Building on insights from our UKRI research phase, Yodomo hosted its first material sales at the Textile Reuse Hub in Fish Island, Hackney Wick, in late 2023. The success of these sales has inspired us to expand our offerings, increasing the number of sale days and scaling up the volume of high-quality textiles that we divert from landfill and incineration.

This year

In early 2024, Yodomo entered a new research and development phase. We designed textile waste systems for social benefit and supporting energy efficiency, working on the newly launched SHIFT innovation ‘Future Industries Demonstrator’, focused on supporting London-based enterprises who are working on innovative solutions to tackle the climate crisis, supported by the UK Government’s Levelling Up fund, working alongside academics from UCL’s Institute of Sustainable Resources and Built Environment and local authorities. As part of this project, we will continue with research and development around the commercialisation of designing insulation products from waste and tracking benefits to local authorities through data capture.

In the meantime, we're continuing developing our waste service and textiles offer for our creative community, working towards a system that stays ahead of impending environmental legislation around textiles and circular economy so that companies manufacturing and using textiles across the UK can transition easily to a more sustainable waste model.

What's next

In the coming months, we have a lot more planned. We'll continue holding fabric sales of some of the best quality domestic-grade textiles, and we'll be rolling out additional member benefits. Our waste service will expand to include aggregate tracking of materials, and we'll be starting research on new cutting-edge technologies to support textile circularity.