The word you are looking for to describe this type of business is “pretailing”, Bart assures me. It is a term that was first coined by Integer Group, a brand-selling and marketing specialist. It is different from e-tailing; the selling of retail goods online, and retailing; the conventional selling of goods and services to customers in stores. “It’s really the way to go for designers,” Bart said.
“It’s less risky because you can test it in the market first. The problem for many designers is; they go to producers with designs they want to make and the producer says, ‘I don’t want to make one, I want to make 100’, and the designer doesn’t have enough money.
“So now with the pretailing platform, designers get time to sell their creations in advance, and when they sell those first 100 items, they have enough money to take the idea to producers and ask them to make it.”
Bart set up Primal Edition with two business partners, Victor le Noble and Roel van de Weijer, with the latter previously setting up a similar crowdfunding platform for movies two years ago. He provided the IT platform to launch the business online. “It gave us a time advantage and cost advantage, so we didn’t have to develop the whole site from scratch. He will stay responsible for the IT platform,” Bart said.
The third brain behind the business, Victor, was part of an organisation that provides yearly presentations in Milan, inviting up to 25 designers from Holland and Belgium to showcase their products in the Italian city. “Victor is now responsible for recruiting top designers for our platform,” Bart added. “My role is management, strategy and marketing.”
But Bart’s background is a world away from the vibrant design industry inside Milan. After studying a Masters in Industrial Engineering, he left a lucrative management consulting position at Altran in July last year for greener pastures. Bart was an established consultant in a career spanning nearly a decade; he worked for IBM Global Services, Siemens AG and DCE Consultants before finishing his career with Altran, only briefly stopping to study a full-time MBA at MIP.
Once he graduated, Bart became “more and more skilled” in innovation management. He specialised in Strategic Design and Luxury Management while studying his MBA, a career focus that seemingly changed Bart’s life. “That’s really my passion now, creating and thinking of new business designs for companies and start-ups,” he said.
“Pretailing is trying to promote and sell products before they are produced for designers, and it’s one of the models I thought up in the last year. The term pretailing is not that well known yet, but I love it. I really want to follow it through.”
Bart quit his consultancy job with IBM, where he had been working on projects across Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, and moved shop to Milan. The option to specialise in design management was the hook that lured him cross-industry. “I just wanted to change my focus entirely and wanted to do something closer to my personal interests, which is design,” he said.
“I always wanted to do an MBA, so it was a perfect combination for me. Living in Milan is wonderful, especially the aperitifs, the lifestyle and the whole design atmosphere. Milan is a really lively city. When you open a door on a grey wall somewhere, it often opens into an entire colourful interior designed building.
“It’s very stimulating. When I visit now, it feels like I’m coming back home.”
But despite Bart’s love of the design industry in Milan, he chose to head the business from Europe in the Netherlands. The country is it its third recession since 2009, and Bart admits it will be a challenge to succeed in an economy that is tightening its grip on consumers wallets. “From the supply side there’s not an issue, because all of the designers obviously want to sell their products,” he said.
“But from consumer side, it will be a challenge. If a designer needs to sell fifty products in the space of two months, it will be a challenge for him. Although, crowdfunding is becoming more and more popular, and from that side I have good faith it will work out. (My concern is) because of the recession, consumers will not buy the stuff we offer them.”
It was always Bart’s plan to move back to the Netherlands. He thought that the salaries on offer for him in Italy were uncompetitive and turned down a job offer with Siemens at the end of his MBA program. In a bid to help his fellow MBAs, Bart is hoping to hire an intern from the MBA program at MIP for the summer of 2014. He visited MIP's Milan campus this week to hold a guest lecture on the design industry. “I’m thinking about having one Italian student for three months here in Amsterdam,” he said.
“Their assignment will be to check if it’s feasible to have a store in Milan, and to set up a plan for the operation. We think it’s attractive for the students and we are a great company to work for.”
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