Another one off FAD’s occasional interviews with people leading companies that are changing the very fabric of the art world , up now is Samir Ceric CEO and Founder of Debut Contemporary.
To catch all of FAD’s interviews with industry leaders from the Art/Tech field please follow this link: http://bit.ly/Ximzho
1 Samir who are you and what have you done in the past ?
I would like to think of myself as a serial entrepreneur with social enterprise ethos and philosophy. I feel I have done a variety of things, from volunteering in a Bosnian refugee camp, working with the British Foreign Office and The Ministry of Defence, I was appointed CEO of a national airline at the age of 29, set up telecom and insurance businesses and then ventured into the art industry almost 10 years ago.
I recently co-founded an award winning fashion business with my wife and my collectors, Wolf & Badger, which led to us winning a Walpole Brand of Tomorrow, highlighting us “as one of the future business leaders in the global fashion industry”. Having exited the business at the point of the business archiving a multi-million pound valuation by raising close to £1miilion inside the 18 months of its launch, I then co-founded Debut Contemporary with my wife Zoe Knight, a renowned fashion designer.
2 What is Debut Contemporary ?
Debut Contemporary is the only professional development platform in the art industry designed to help artists turn their creative practice into a viable business. It’s been labelled as the business academy of the art world where we assist artists in identifying commercial and creative opportunities as well as teaching them how art derivatives could assist one’s career both in terms of additional revenue streams as well as critical acclaim. Artists are taught PR and marketing and social media strategies, copyrights and IPRs, artist resale rights, accountancy, business planning, as well as how best to approach galleries, curators, collectors and art critics, and from long term relationships that will serve them for a long time. The platform acts as an incubator of creative start-ups and prepares artists to become an investable art business.
3 Who else is there at Debut Contemporary and what do they do ?
The Debut team is led by Sophia Victoria, our executive director who is the heart and soul of Debut and has been by my side from the very beginning. She is loved by absolutely everybody and will be instrumental in assisting me to scale up the business in London and internationally. She is one special lady; Zoe Knight is our creative director and heads various collaborations between art and fashion and art and designs and adds that magic touch on small details that make Debut a 5* outlet. Zoe’s input is just invaluable and her successful fashion career at the top level is a great asset we benefit from very regularly; Carolin Wagner who is our head of business development and one of the best networkers I’ve ever met. She was a managing director of the Chelsea Art Museum in New York and it really shows. She is just simply brilliant and is another great asset to Debut. I have no doubts we will hear a lot more on Carolin in the forthcoming years; Kelvin de Veth who is our talent scout and ‘guilty’ of some amazing discoveries at Debut. Kelvin also heads our social media and ensures all the content reads well. He is incredibly hard working, committed and has a huge potential to become a heavyweight in the industry himself.
I hope to see all the team members win industry awards in 2014 and 2015 as professionals in their own right as they truly deserve these industry titles; Virginia Cody Maurer (aka VC), a recent addition to our team who is proving herself to be indispensable already. VC is working very closely with me on a book we aim to publish in the next few months which will act as a toolkit for artists all over the world and give them some very practical tips and pass on some very useful business know-how regarding turning their creative practice into a viable business without compromising their artistic integrity.
We are hoping to announce the launch of this book on the 26th April 2013 at the Royal Geographic Society where I will be giving my first TED talk, for which I am very honoured and privileged. VC also oversees some very exciting events at Debut and we just love having her around; Josephine Mees heads our corporate division and is very talented and committed. She will be heading various projects in the corporate world that include the likes of the Deutsche Bank rotating exhibition scheduled for later on this year, and other corporate companies in the City and 5* boutique hotels we are currently in talks with; on the Board level we have Rob Wirszycz and Terence Tsakok with the wealth of experience and knowledge in the world of online and tech start-ups.
We are currently talking to one more experienced tech investor who will join our executive team to strengthen our squad as well as another incredibly talented MBA student Christopher Steinau who is currently at the London Business School whom I met when I participated in the Venture Capital Investment Competition at the London Business School a couple of months ago as a potential Head of Digital that will work closely with us on implementation of our e-commerce solution. Debut is all about people and that includes dozens of incredibly talented and committed artists whose careers are shaping up very nicely.
We are also about to embark on a very ambitious fundraising campaign assisting artists raising funding for their businesses including traditional business angel investment opportunities as well as crowd funding facilities in strategic partnership with CrowdBnk, an entity that was founded by a London Business School MBA graduate Ayan Mitra whom I met a few months ago when I gave a talk on creative entrepreneurship at the LBS. That talk has led to the great opportunity to give a TED talk at the Royal Geographic Society taking place on 26th April 2013 and the theme is ‘Intersection’, and in our case it’ll be an intersection between art, business, e-commerce and education.
We also have some extraordinary collaborators who happen to be Debut workshop leaders as well, such as Sara Raza, an independent curator soon to be curating one of the pavilions at Venice Biennale, ex Tate and an RCA PhD scholar (who also advices on our curatorial and professional development strategies); Anders Petterson of Art Tactic; Lucille Zacaria of Deutsche Bank Corporate Art Collections; Toby Kress, formerly at the Frith Street Gallery and now at Culture Label as Director of Operations; Elif Bayoglu of Sotheby’s, to name a few.
4 Real world and online are set to merge over the next few years how does DC hope to exploit this ?
We have recently engaged an award winning creative agency, Bureau for Visual Affairs, that delivered the Hirst’s most recent website, and worked with Tate, MOMA, the Guggenheim as well as Anya Hindmarch and Whistles in the fashion world to conduct the scoping phase regarding our website and e-commerce needs. The intention is to create a very experiential website underpinning the core values and ethos of Debut Contemporary to do with the professional development of artists as well we design and deliver a very robust, sophisticated and scalable e-commerce platform in order for us to offer art content including multiples as well as original works of art. There is a huge positive movement in that arena and includes many major players including Artspace, Paddle8 and Culture Label, to name a few.
However what makes us unique is our close working relationship with all the artists whose multiples and originals we will be offering online in a very curated and selective way. This is a very similar approach we adopted at Wolf & Badger which led to a historical and unprecedented collaboration with Selfridges in a form of a pop up in their Wonder Room on Oxford Street. Another USP is our physical location on Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill which will give online ‘shoppers’ additional confidence to buy from us. And that coupled by the fact that each purchase will lead to 70% or 80% going to a creative start up makes us truly unique in what we do and what we will have on offer. The online solution is scheduled to be launched in June 2013 and we are all very excited about it all.
5 What revenue streams do you have now ? And what new ones do you envisage ?
At present we are turning over approximately £400,000 per annum and with the launch of our e-commerce site and a newly designed website, in addition to another location in Mayfair by end of the year, we aim to turn over £1million inside the next 12 months. With the launches intended in New York, Hong Kong, Dubai, Delhi and Sao Paolo inside the next 3 years, arrival of our retail spaces inside department stores and 5 start hotels, we aim to turn over in excess of £10 million per annum by 2016.
6 You are just in the process of securing some funding, what has this been earmarked for ?
This is our first round and we are planning to raise £800,000 for the launch of our e-commerce platform, opening of a new retail space in Mayfair (ideally on South Morton Street) and entry into a London department store (we are currently in talks with 2 major ones in London) followed up by the second round of £2-3million which will be designed for our international expansion plans.
7 Do you have plans to expand Internationally ?
Indeed. We are very interested in the international market in particular Asia and the Middle East, as I said earlier on. However the US is of a strategic importance to us and I would love to see Debut in Africa and South America too. I failed to mention Istanbul and Vienna but these are two very interesting, and fast developing art and business markets. Hence you can expect us to see us ‘popping up’ there too at some point in the future.
8 Has been being successful in the fashion industry helped you in the art world ? have you found many differences ?
Indeed. The business model and the concept we piloted in the fashion world, we pretty much replicated in the art world. There are a lot more similarities than differences between art and fashion, to be perfectly honest. I run something called ‘Creative Business Surgery’ at the Electric House on a monthly basis as we have a very close working relationship and partnership with the Soho House group where I also give talks on creative entrepreneurship and invite other successful entrepreneurs to do ‘In Conversation With’ me talks. The next one is scheduled to be with Peter Tullin of Culture Label on 19th March 2013. That’s where I come across many creative entrepreneurs from fashion, art, design and other creative disciplines and it always amazes me how similar these businesses actually are on all levels of business modelling and scalability.
9 Why do you think now is a good time to expand DC ?
I suspect we will not have a first mover competitive advantage forever. However there is a huge scope in what we specialise at both in the education and commercial arenas. I would like to think that our art business curriculum will find its place inside most art schools in the UK and internationally and I believe that the art content created by the artists Debut discovers, nurtures, mentors and launches will be able to offer something rather unique and special in comparison to most other online platforms selling original art as well as multiples.
Hence there are many reasons why we should forge ahead more ambitiously and more aggressively in order to assist more artists to succeed as well as offer a much wider audience an opportunity to purchase their first piece of art, engage directly with their creators, learn more about importance of art in today’s day and age in the society we are living in and make a real difference in helping many creative practices stay in business. The UK has the largest creative industries sector in Europe, employing 1.5 million people in over 100,000 businesses, contributing over £33 billion to the UK economy and we want to do our part to make it even more successful and more lucrative for the benefit of all.
10 Finally if you had $250,000 what artists work would you buy ?
It would definitely have to be Anish Kapoor, Francis Bacon or Chris Ofili (If I can get buy anything from them for ‘just’ $250,000) and last but not least Matthew Darbyshire my wife and I came across him at Frieze art fair in 2011 at the Herald Street Gallery stand.
If you are a member of Shoreditch House or any of the other Houses you can catch Samir in conversation with another of our interviewees:
Peter Tullin with “CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP: IN CONVERSATION”
Shoreditch House Tuesday 19th March 2013 7PM – 9PM
Event info
Peter Tullin is a cultural entrepreneur and co-founder of CultureLabel.com – a curated eCommerce selling affordable gifts and art from over 750 leading culture institutions. Peter’s partners include the V&A, Tate and the British Museum and the site also features artists including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Peter joins us in conversation with Samir Ceric from Debut Contemporary to discuss his inspiring career. Come along with an open mind and plenty of questions.
To catch all of FAD’s interviews with industry leaders from the Art/Tech field please follow this link: http://bit.ly/Ximzho
