In the framework of the EU Programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (COSME), the call for proposals “Designer-based consumer goods” (COS-DESIGN-2015-3-03) has been opened for submissions.

The call is intended to reduce the time-to-market for innovative solutions, to remove barriers to a wider application of creative solutions, and to improve the competitiveness of European SMEs in the global markets. The significant potential to replicate innovations may be enabled not only in the participating enterprises, but also through the supply chain, thus generating major benefits.

The aim is to support SMEs that offer new products, services or solutions through first application, market-uptake and replication, as well as to encourage the scaling up and commercialization of edge technologies and creative solutions that need incentives to penetrate the market.

The target for this call is the design-based consumer goods industry, a dynamic market with many opportunities for European SMEs operating in sectors such as textiles, clothing, leather and fur products, footwear , bags and accessories, sports goods, games and toys, interior home decoration, eyewear, watches, jewelry, cosmetics and beauty.

The call is open to SMEs and other legal entities. SMEs can participate alone or in a consortium.

The consortium leader must be a SME, and may include other partners such as universities and educational institutions, research and technology organizations, relevant support services.

The budget available for this call is € 11.2 million.

The grant covers 50% of eligible expenditure, with an average size of contribution per project comprised between  800.000-1 million euro.  A total of 12-14 projects are expected to be funded.

The minimum duration of projects is 12 months, up to a maximum of 33 months.

Submission of proposals should be done through the online system in the Participant Portal, within the deadline of 23 July 2015.

All official documents regarding the call are available at the webpage:

https://ec.europa.eu/easme/en/cos-design-2015-3-03-design-based-consumer-goods