K-C hosts competition for start-ups in digital space

December 29, 2014 - United States Of America

The Kimberly-Clark Digital Innovation Lab (D'Lab) is encouraging start-ups to come up with innovative ideas in the digital space by hosting the KChallenge startup competition.

The second edition of KChallenge startup competition will be held at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

According to Kimberly-Clark (K-C), the winning startup will receive the opportunity to pilot a project with one of K-C’s global brands such as Kleenex, Huggies, Depend, Scott or Kotex.

“Consumer adoption of new technologies has increased at an unprecedented rate over the past decade and will only accelerate in the future,” K-C says.

It adds, “Brands across multiple industries are looking to the forward edges of innovation to identify new ways to connect with their digitally savvy consumers.

“Startups represent a large part of this forward edge and the KChallenge is an ideal interface for these agile entrepreneurs to connect with K-C global brands.”

K-C D'Lab organized the competition with the support of Mindshare Worldwide, the global media agency network, and its venture capital partners.

Startups submitted proposals for the KChallenge that would benefit one or more of Kimberly-Clark's brands in connecting with the omni-channel consumer.

K-C narrowed the submissions down to a short list of startup finalists who will present their ideas to a judging panel of company executives on January 5, 2015 at CES.

K-C judges will rate and review the ideas to determine which solutions represent the biggest opportunity for its iconic brands.

Clive Sirkin, chief marketing officer at K-C says "Our focus is to be the orchestrators and facilitators of innovation by tapping into the outside world."

"We want the world to be our laboratory, and through events such as the KChallenge and CES, we want to tap into all the disruptive ideas that will connect us to the future first," he adds.

“With brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depend, Kimberly-Clark holds No. 1 or No. 2 share positions in more than 80 countries,” K-C informs. (AR)