The winner of FIT’s fourth annual PETE Prize for Entrepreneurs was announced Wednesday, May 13, at FIT. The 2025 winner, Harnoor Sekhon, whose company is SNJA (meaning “communal ownership”), has created a direct-to-consumer brand specializing in easy-to-wear, performance-enhancing pre-tied turbans designed to provide convenience for the wearer.
Sekhon, the first graduate student to win the PETE Prize, is a graduate of the Global Fashion Management program and was chosen from among ten competing teams. As the winner, she is receiving $30,000, along with office space for one year and marketing, legal, financial, creative, and operational guidance on how to build and launch an innovative company.
To Sekhon, her idea is very personal. She came up with the notion during her first semester when she and her classmates were tasked with coming up with ideas for businesses and it just so happened that she came from a Sikh household in which she would see her father wear a hat rather than a turban while traveling, and saw her grandfather develop issues tying his as he got older so he began to leave his turban nearby to re-wear.
“It’s just a product that’s for convenience and provides help for today’s lifestyle,” Sekhon said. “There are alternatives, but a turban is very close to a Sikh person’s heart. It [represents] cultural integrity and there’s a lot of pride related to it. I’m in no way trying to replace the importance of the traditional turban-tying significance and importance and meaning, but if there could be something very similar that could give them a feel of that, I want to bring that to the market.”
Sekhon plans to use the $30,000 for product development and product refinement. She hopes the product will launch early next year.
The PETE Prize is inspired by the late Peter G. Scotese, chairman emeritus of the FIT Board of Trustees and a pioneering entrepreneur. Seed funding was provided by Edwin Goodman, former chair of the FIT Board of Trustees and a partner of Activate Venture Partners.
The PETE Prize is administered by the FIT DTech Lab as a jury-picked merit award competition that recognizes excellence in the development of fresh, insightful, and creative ideas which are envisioned through execution-focused business plans that demonstrate innovative, design-oriented thinking. The proposal represents a for-profit business idea, distinctive in the demonstration of creativity and imaginative qualities. Ideas submitted must include a focus on art, business, design, mass communication, and technology connected to the fashion industry—and promote FIT’s core values of innovation, sustainability, and diversity.
Judges for this year’s PETE Prize were Joanne Arbuckle, consultant, Office of the President/DTech Lab; Faryl Robin Gilston, founder, CEO, and creative director of Faryl Robin Footwear; Aleksandra Gosiewski, co-founder and COO at Keel Labs, a biomaterials company featuring seaweed based yarn; Suzanne Hader, chief marketing officer at Trashie, a responsible recycling company featuring The Take Back Bag; and Richard Jaffe, adjunct instructor of Global Fashion Management, FIT.
The other two finalists this year were: Comphie, a fashion brand for children to help alleviate anxiety and sensory sensitivities, incorporating deep pressure therapy into garments made from weighted fabrics; and COEUR, a D2C manufacturer of leather goods using full-grain regenerative leather from certified U.S. farms producing clean food.
