FANNABEE, a digital social marketplace for collectors

Project Information

FANNABEE

Grant agreement ID: 744081

DOI

10.3030/744081

Project closed

EC signature date 15 November 2016

Start date 1 November 2016

End date 30 April 2017

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

FANNABEE SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FANNABEE (FANNABEE, a digital social marketplace for collectors)

Reporting period: 2016-11-01 to 2017-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The overall EU trade of cultural good has a value of over 22B€, with a trade surplus of EUR 1.8B€. The group of cultural products itself is very heterogeneous: there will be much less interest in embroidery, maps, and architectural plans and drawings, for example, than for CDs and DVDs. These differences in consumption characteristics and the structure of industrial production and its specialisation in different Member States have an impact on patterns of imports and exports of cultural articles. This requires to address every cultural product with the right tools and platform, so to enhance user experience according to every category of cultural product. FANNABEE is addressing a specific sector of cultural goods (music collectibles and memorabilia: $10 B€ transaction worldwide every year, 30M music collectors worldwide, 60% online) and it is providing a solution able to cope with the need of ever demanding collectors: map their collection and find new opportunities to trade and exchange collectable items.
The objective of FANNABEE is to bring on the market a web platform allowing music collectors to catalogue, share and exchange the items of their collections. FANNABEE wants to address this specific business opportunity, placing itself in this area by allowing collectors to Catalog, Trade and Showcase their collection of CDs, Vinyls and Memorabilia via web and mobile. The platform is designed to offer a 360 ° service and is developed with the best technology available on the market today in the big players (Facebook, Pinterest, etc.). The objective of the feasibility study is to drive the initial market expansion of FANNABEE on EU and international markets in whatever country, enabling a community of people willing to share and showcase items and collectables.
The objective of the feasibility study is to drive the initial market expansion of FANNABEE on EU and US markets: the product needs to evolve in order to address every type of collectors, in whatever country, enabling a community of people willing to share and exchange items of their collectables. In order to achieve this ambitious objective, a feasibility study is needed to carry out:
• an extensive market study addressing music collectibles market and further areas of collecting and business opportunities in the digitization and sharing of cultural heritage (music records, arts, trading cards..) inside the European countries and beyond. The market study will allow to clearly identify and quantifying the main market segments, defining main market drivers, customers wants and go -to-market strategy;
• a complete validation study of web and mobile solution, by involving real users in targeted counties through test and focus groups;
• activities to define marketing plans and definition investments needed to prepare a comprehensive economic analysis according to functional results of market studies and validation activities:
• a comprehensive analysis on local regulation and third parties rights (i.e. privacy regulations, copyrights, IPR);
• a complete P&L account providing main financial data to support the marketing plan.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the 6 months period of feasibility study, following activities were carried out:
• Market analysis as per quantitative data (i.e. market segmentation, market trends) and qualitative information (i.e. competition analysis and SWOT analysis);
• Definition of stakeholders map, in which we positioned all relevant actors in FANNABEE ecosystems
• Interviews with top collectors, identified both within and outside Fannabee platform, stakeholders and record stores. The interviews were aimed at collecting direct feedback on the platform, so to better address users needs and to refine the value proposition. Both stakeholders and collectors were asked to use and test the platform.
• Identification of new functionalities to be developed. Starting from feedback form collectors, we redesigned the FANNABEE value proposition, having regards to functionalities already developed for every step of collection process and experience. For every group of tasks, we defined the proper actions that will support the technological evolution of FANNABEE platform.
• Design of marketing plan and identification of marketing actions. According to feedback received during the feasibility study, we consider then that FANNABEE must me promoted by exploiting both on-line and off-line communication channels
• Finalisation of financial analysis
• Definition of FANNABEE roadmap.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Progress beyond the state of the art. FANNABEE embraces 2 kind of markets: 1. Antiques and collectibles Marketplace 2. Online collectors websites. The first is currently highly concentrated, the biggest player is eBay, which is a strong competitor in terms of sales in vintage and collectible items, but doesn’t offer any collecting tool so it’s not going to satisfy completely the same needs that FANNABEE intend to cover. It’s not a direct competitor. The second market is instead highly fragmented both in market share both in type and quality of services offered. Competitors belonging are Discogs for music collectors, Collectorz for a wide range of collectors, Depop and Just Colleting.
Willing to compare both direct and indirect competitors, FANNABEE aims at providing a more engaging user experience, by combining community value, with cataloguing functionalities and marketplace. The most similar service is Discogs.
Societal impact. Making the collections held by Europe's libraries, archives, museums and audiovisual archives available online is a win-win for culture, economic growth and individual fulfillment. Digitising Europe's cultural heritage, making it accessible online and preserving it for future generations is one of the challenges of the Digital Agenda for Europe. The Commission Recommendation on Digitisation and online accessibility and digital preservation of cultural material (2011/711/EU) asked Member States to step up their efforts, pool their resources and involve the private sector in digitising cultural material, in order to increase online accessibility of European cultural heritage. The Report on Digitisation, Online Accessibility and Digital Preservation of Cultural Material issued by European Comission in 2014 shows that there has been an increase of digitisation plans and overviews of digitised material, more cross-border collaboration and public-private partnerships as well as pooling of digitisation efforts through competence centers or specific aggregators. Web visibility of cultural content has increased through reduction of watermarking or visual protection measures and wider use of open formats or social media. However, digitization remains a challenge, with only a fraction of Europe's collections digitised so far (around 12% on average for libraries and less than 3% for films). FANNABEE project will address this challenge thanks to the development and maintenance of a wide database of cultural goods (such us recorded media, developed video games, arts, antiques and collectors' piece) made it available and openly accessible in a digital way, to promote the exchange of ideas and information through Community creation.
Gender issues are taken in serious consideration by FANNABEE project. User interaction will consider social and biological factors that may influence the usability of the platform and tools. These issues will be considered when implementing user validation phase.

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