Firenze Creativa Shop is a portal developed from the needs of the craft sector to be present online with the aim of enlarging the range of clients and markets.
Firenze Creativa Shop is the first virtual dedicated shop of the Florentine craftspeople, developed thanks to the efforts of 4 partners:
• Municipality of Florence
• Artex (https://www.artex.firenze.it/ )
• MIP – Murate Idea Park (https://murateideapark.it/ )
• Vudoo (www.vudoo.it )
Due to the loss of tourism because of Covid-19, the Municipality of Florence wants to help Florentine craftspeople restoring their activities by building up a new platform devoted to crafts. Starting with the network of Firenze Creativa, a community where experiences and works of thousands of Florentine craftspeople are shared, we developed the dedicated marketplace to overcome the loss of clients in the City.
The value of the platform is that it takes care of everything around the sale: the payment, the shipping, the insurance, and returns. Moreover, the innovative immediate system to sell products online helps artisans selling online. The craftsman can take a photo of the object with the phone and upload that into the virtual shop in a few seconds.
Resources needed
Economic resources needed: 10.000 euros.
Human resources: team of developers of the platform (a programmer, a marketing expert, a logistics manager); team of project manager for the dissemination and implementation of the project (project managers, chief of the project, graphic designer).
Evidence of success
Firenze Creativa Shop is a project at its beginning. The aim is to develop a solution for Florentines craftspeople who want to join the opportunity to sell their products online. For the pilot project, we have planned to include a total of 25 craftspeople, each one of them will receive close mentoring to help manage his presence on the platform. In Florence, there are so many Micro and SMEs that do not have e-commerce, thanks to the simplicity of F.C.S. artisan can access new markets online.
Difficulties encountered
The biggest challenge was to help artisan understand the importance of the platform and how to use that. Other challenges: to simplify as much as possible the platform, engage artisans in the pilot project during the Covid-19 situation, the English translation of any contents from the artisans.
Potential for learning or transfer
Firenze Creativa Shop helps craftspeople entering the online world, due to its clear and easy system, free and without any subscription fee or fee for posting products on the shop. It's the first online shop devoted to Florence Craftspeople and their products. It is transferrable because of the technology developed by the start-up Vudoo: which is adaptable to many kinds of products and for any markets, all over Europe. Now more than ever is important to give a unique brand identity of a place through online resources: Firenze Creativa Shops helps clients find the actual productions of Florentine artisans, and let them be in touch with the City of Florence thanks to the relationship with its Micro and SMEs.
Tags: Manufacturing, SME
