Anna’s interview with Independent Collectors

by Anna Buss

Anna Buss spoke with Uwe Thomas, CEO of Independent Collectors GmbH, Berlin, Germany.

A community for art collectors – who come up with this unusual idea?
One of the founders, Christian Schwarm, collects contemporary art by himself and knows what’s going on in that environment. The problem is that many of these collectors are unintended mavericks. They are art experts and highly interested in this field but have no one to talk about it at their level. Our idea was to create a platform for collectors to contact like minded people worldwide and share their thoughts.

So you started this community from the very beginning? The launch phase is known as a very critical step for every founder. How did you manage this?
Actually, everything begun with exactly two members: Christian Schwarm and Tommi Brem. Christian Schwarm has experience asa collector, Tommi Brem was a newbie.

What’s your strategy to let the community grow?
We take care for Search Engine Optimization. It’s important that Google finds us. But we don’t do any advertising because we can predict the behaviour of our target group: They are keen to get to know other art experts and collectors. So, one way is that you discover the community by yourself. The other way to join the community is a recommendation. Or, if you like, you can contact me via Xing to get an invitation code.

Are you not afraid that your target group is too small to let a community grow longterm?
Not at all. If you take a look at the German art scene: There are thousands of people who collect contemporary art. No idea, how many collectors we can count all over the world. Enough to let the community grow and keep it lively.

But why should I join your community? As an alternative, I can go to Facebook, to Xing or even to Flickr. I can upload pictures of my collection and meet others who are interested in contemporary art. What’s the advantage of your communities?
It is the quality of our members that makes the difference. We are very picky and do not accept everybody. If you have a recommendation, no problem. But if a new member knocks at our door, we take our time to check if this newbie is really a collector. And not a sales person who looks for a new distribution channel.

This means, community management plays an important role for you?
Yes, we take a lot of care for our members to get to know them in person. For example, we organize offline events. We offer VIP tickets for art fairs, for example. Whenever we do meet members offline, this special community-feeling becomes concrete. But there is another reason why this community needs careful management: A good community manager is someone to trust in. It is essential for our members that their personal data and their profile information is in good hands. Our members can decide how anonymous they want to be at the community. Nobody wants to tell the world that she or he has tons of treasures at home, you know. So we offer our members the possibility to open their profile and online exhibitions for the whole community or for their contacts within the community only. We even let the users close a part of their online exhibitions with a special password. And they can hide their profile from Google.

Are there other special needs of your users?
Yes. We made the experience that the majority of our users do not have great online knowledge. They are not familiar with complex functionalities. They do not bring years of experience. This means that we need a strong focus on usability. Everything must kept strictly simple. And here, it is a stroke of luck that the founders of the community combine a 10 years experience in community building with art expertise.

How do you right now earn money?
With sponsoring. We are proud to welcome BMW as our first global partner! Art exhibitions, art fairs but also art transport companies, hotels or insurances are very interested in our target group. In the future, we do plan premium memberships. And we have other plans … but I don’t want to give away a secret. So stay tuned and watch our community carefully.