A platform idea to bring designers, craftspeople and buyers together — and a real attempt to build a business around small series.
Explore the caseDesigners had ideas to make, craftspeople had the skills to make them, and buyers could discover objects with a story beyond mass production. We imagined a service that would bring all three together around small series.
Young designers often had concepts but no path to a skilled workshop. The platform was conceived as a way to find a maker and develop the product together.
Concept → collaboration → productThe relationship began with Hand und Werk. The three-sided value proposition came from the pitch, not from proven market demand. In practice, many of the workshops we hoped to involve were already busy.
The 2013 university project, then called Hand und Werk, began with maker interviews, competitor research, personas and a survey about furniture buying. We mapped a service before deciding what each medium should do.
Ten questions about furniture buying and inspiration. The average respondent was 25; this was directional research, not proof of demand for a marketplace.
Interviews with makers and research into existing shops and labels.
Stakeholders, personas and a customer journey exposed the handoffs between people.
A WordPress shop prototype, product data import, app screens and magazine made the idea testable as a system.
Cut-out shop elements and app sketches let the team examine navigation, product discovery and collaboration as connected experiences.
Hand und Werk already envisioned small series developed by designers and craftspeople, then discovered by buyers. The shop, collaboration app and magazine each played a distinct part in that platform concept. Select a medium to see the original 2013 work.
The web shop brought products, materials, makers and purchase intent together. A WordPress prototype could import product records from a CSV file — an early attempt at one content source for the different channels.
The app was designed for projects, orders, messages and contacts between designers and craftspeople. We deliberately resisted making it a smaller version of the shop: that would not have given its users a new reason to open it.
Issue 01/13 of Handgemacht focused on the Black Forest. Designed with Anika Flessner, it gave the objects room for long-form storytelling that a product card could not carry.
The 2013 documentation shows the same product catalogue considered for desktop, tablet and phone. These are prototype views, not a live storefront.
Moritz Schmidt's cuckoo clock became a way to show the whole chain: who designed it, who made it, where it came from and how someone might discover it. The object was real; the marketplace around it was still a concept.
Moritz Schmidt's original sketches explored how a Black Forest cuckoo clock could keep its mechanical tradition while finding a simpler shape.
In the magazine, readers could see its origin and making process. The digital and printed work told different parts of the same story.
Show the people and the work behind an object, not only its price.
Hand und Werk began as a large student project. In 2014 Tobias Lauer and I explored taking essentially the same small-series platform into a business as SERIKAT. Designers, craftspeople and buyers — and the idea of bringing them together — remained at its core.
Hand und Werk already proposed a platform where designers and craftspeople could develop limited runs together. The shop, app and magazine gave making, coordination and discovery their own places.
SERIKAT joined seriell and Unikat — a series with the character of a one-off. We gave the existing platform concept a new identity, a site and a business pitch.
2013
2014In the SERIKAT pitch, we described gathering buyer commitments before a workshop made a small batch. It made the existing platform idea more concrete as a business proposal. It was never a live ordering process.
Choose a step to follow the proposed process. The model remained a business concept, not an account of completed orders.
A designer and a craftsperson put forward an object, with its materials, maker and process visible to buyers.
The 2014 site made the three participant groups visible and gave craft and product stories a stronger place. A pre-launch page went online; these screens and the film document the broader website design.
We gave buyers, craftspeople and designers their own routes into the service. The interface made the three-sided model visible. The workshop invitation assumed that another sales channel would be attractive; our later recruitment experience challenged that assumption.
We took SERIKAT to competitions and venture pitches, and worked with a team at Aalen University on market and sales questions. The pre-launch site was online, but convincing investors was difficult: the platform would only work if designers, craftspeople and buyers all took part.
Recruiting craftspeople was another obstacle. Many of the workshops we had in mind were already fully booked, so the prospect of more orders was not a compelling reason for them to join. We saw this three-sided dependency as the concept’s central weakness and decided not to continue. The full marketplace was never funded or launched.
What I took away was a sharper question for any platform idea: why would each group join before the others are there?
Brand, editorial work, app and shop concepts, website design, prototypes and a pre-launch presence.
Maker interviews, a furniture-buying survey, pitches and market consulting with Aalen University.
A funded marketplace or live group-order operation. Planned financial figures are not presented as results.
The work connected workshops, screens and printed pages. The venture taught us to examine the reason each participant would join that system.
Credits. Hand und Werk was a 2013 HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd team project by Anika Flessner, Tobias Lauer, Martha Miosga, Timo Röhrig, Moritz Schmidt, Ralph Strehlow, Dominik Witzke and Shu Yang, supervised by Prof. Dr. Susanne Schade, Prof. Jens Döring and Thomas Schönweitz. I designed the magazine with Anika, the website and shop, and the platform and app concept.
I co-founded SERIKAT with Tobias Lauer; Daniel Glück and Moritz Schmidt completed the team, and further contributors helped with the pitches. The consulting project at Aalen University was carried out by Daniel Glück, Christoph Kröner and Andreas Lindenmeier, supervised by Prof. Dr. Arndt Borgmeier.
Original 2013–15 project material. Screens shown here are designs and prototypes; they do not imply that a marketplace was operating.