DIYgogo CIC

DIYgogo seeks to increase the up-cycling of building materials using web based applications, therefore fulfilling our environmental and social objectives -

• To increase the up-cycling of construction materials.

• To reduce the use of unsustainable disposal chains, such as incineration and landfill.

• To increase property maintenance and restoration opportunities for all.

We have ambitious targets to become the UK’s primary online marketplace for up-cycling construction materials.

Our activities

Having constructed and launched our website with the help of a National Lottery grant, we are now focusing on developing the service as a native phone application. Whilst this is being created, we will put our resources into considering how best to bring the app to market, with a well considered and executed marketing campaign.

Why?

DEFRA reports in their February 2018 edition of UK Statistics on Waste that the UK generated 202.8 million tonnes of waste. Construction, demolition and excavation (CDE) was responsible for 59% of that number, whilst according to Designing Buildings Wiki, an online forum for sharing knowledge and discussing issues within the construction industry, 30% of all current landfill comprises of construction waste, whilst an average of 13% of materials that reach a building site will go straight to landfill without ever being used. DIYgogo serves to mitigate these figures by becoming an effective component in the circular economy that is focused on waste in the construction industry.

Organisation

DIYgogo Community Interest Company is a private company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales with the Community Interest Company Regulator, registered number 11385877. The registered office address is Jury’s Gap Farmhouse, Jury’s Gap, Camber, East Sussex, TN31 7SH. Incorporated 31^st May 2018 with 3 directors, and 2 part time staff.

Achievements

Following the construction of the website, and a grant from the National Lottery, a freelance marketer and myself carried out a marketing campaign through our social media channels. Focusing the activity in London, Tunbridge Well and Brighton, the outreach achieved a good foundation of interest to develop the project from. We currently have 50 registered users, and have achieved a steadily growing following on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages since beginning activity 6 months ago. We have had various publications in regional media, and have secured a public liability insurance policy.

Current challenges

• Creating an effective interface. We’ve learned that the majority of our market will be using the service from smartphones, so the logical step is to develop a smartphone application.
• Developing an effective route to market. We have identified 2 methods. B2B – developing collaboration with large scale construction firms. B2C – to organically grow engagement from the ground up using social media. We feel that a joint approach between these methods would be effective. Though the devil is in the detail! This is where we’d like to focus any pro bono assistance.

Intentions

We intend to scale the project so that the service is available UK wide, certainly achieved within the first 5 years of operation. Once this is established, we can consider the application of the second stage of the project – construction skills workshops. In response to the reduced availability of tradesmen/tradeswomen, and as a route to employment, particularly in deprived areas of the UK, we will organise free construction skills workshops within communities that we feel would most benefit from such activity. Skills such as carpentry, brick laying and roofing will be explored in workshops run by selected professionals. Our ability to organise this will of course depend on the resources available to us once we have established the use of the website and smartphone app. Therefore in 10 years time we aim to have both of these stages running effectively

Time frame

We would like to have the phone application ready within 5 months of now, which according to our applications for it’s development, is certainly attainable. Therefore, we would like to have a market strategy marked out for this date, say end of March. However, as we are an organisation that is contingent on the assistance of others, we are flexible, and this point is of course open to discussion.

If you’d like to get involved, please get in touch.