Team Repair
We came across Team Repair when they won the Environment Award in the London Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition, in June 2022 and were heartened to see a young company thinking about the issues of e-waste and lack of STEM diversity in the work force.
There’s a huge world-wide problem with e-waste and planned obsolescence of consumer goods (Planned obsolescence involves goods becoming unusable after a certain length of time with no method of repair). Legislation is changing, giving consumers the “Right to Repair” goods they purchase but there’s still a way to go. There is also the “throw away” culture and a massive over consumption of consumer goods to overcome!
Team Repair is encouraging the next generation to repair, not replace, tackling the electronic waste crisis. Their circular model sends children electronic gadgets with carefully planned faults to teach them both STEM skills, like how the components work, and the real-life skill of repairing things in a fun and engaging way.
Team Repair was founded by a diverse team of five Imperial College London engineers aiming to solve some of today’s biggest problems. The team (Megan Hale, Anaïs Engelmann, Oscar Jones, Oliver Colebourne & Patrick D. McGuckian) were all on the Design Engineering course at Imperial College London, and got together to do their final year project, the start of Team Repair!
Team Repair was formally founded towards the end of 2021. The team had a clear plan to develop a programme introducing children to STEM and sustainability by providing practical learning, and the opportunity to explore the inner workings of real technology as they perform their own repairs! The team plan to develop a range of subscription boxes for different aged children. They have started developing the boxes for younger children ( 8–12 year olds ) and are currently beta testing these with a range of families. On-line release is planned for 2023. The team will then start tackling the subscription boxes for older children.
One of the challenges Team Repair has is finding sources of suitable e-waste to use in their kits. They are looking to partner with companies in the electronic/electrical sector, so if you have any relevant contacts Team Repair would love to hear from you!
Team Repair have been very successful winning a number of prizes, that has provided some funds to get started. As well as winning the Environment prize in the London Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition, they were finalists in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition 2022 and Imperial Enterprise Lab WE Innovate Challenge 2022, for women leading emerging companies.
They are also looking to get money in the door through workshops and repair cafes. But major investment will be needed to get through to the launch next year and the company will be looking to get further investment later in 2022.
You can find out more about Team Repair and their latest progress on their website.
If you would like to know more about this fascinating company, please contact John Allies at john@strategicallies.co.uk
Images courtesy of Team Repair