Experience collectors have a new hub
Alice Ko collects moments and memories.
“Minimalism is the new black,” said Ko, a 31-year-old marketing and business consultant. “It’s trendy to live the idea that less is more and I personally try not to indulge in things.”
The Vancouver-based startup Fieldtripp is built for Alice and her like-minded peers. The service offers high-end experiences, classes and workshops for individuals and groups, along with slick booking and payment options.
“I love learning new things, cooking, baking, personal development,” Ko said. “Instead of going out for drinks or dinner with my friends, we take a class and socialize and learn something really cool.”
Over the years, Ko has tried every fitness class she could find online and used to spend hours poring over arts listings at Eventbrite to satisfy her creative side, but after attending a vegan cheesemaking workshop she was hooked on Fieldtripp.
“I have 70 tabs open on my browser, I’m a tab monster, so I like that Fieldtripp is curated and that all those things are on one platform,” she said. “It’s like a one-stop shop and I know all the workshops have been hand-selected.”
Since its soft launch in April, Fieldtripp’s list of potential clients has grown from 300 to about 1,500 and three full-time employees. The service launches in Victoria early next month, with plans to add two new markets each month.
Fieldtripp informally bills itself as the Etsy of workshops, classes and cool experiences. It was founded by Amielle Lake, formerly with Hootsuite; CEO Aki Kaltenbach, founder of local marketing software firm Tagga; technical officer Andre Liem, formerly of Invoke Media; and designer Amanda Popkin, formerly of Vision Critical.
“We all have busy lives — three of us are parents — and we were trying to think of how we could make life better and easier,” Lake said. “What we kept coming back to were shared experiences, doing fun things together with friends or family and how those were the things that stuck with us.”
They are not alone. Research suggests many adults her age place a high value on experiences over expensive toys, houses and cars. The only notable exception is their zeal for smartphones.
A survey conducted for Eventbrite found 78 per cent of young adults would rather spend money on experiences and live events than possessions.
But when the founders went looking for experiences to share, like Ko, they soon found themselves combing through hundreds of online listings and websites in every corner of the web. Finding quality often means reading dozens of reviews and trying to decide if they are even real.
As it turns out, potential Fieldtripp workshop hosts — from bakers and potters to public art tour guides and photographers — often struggled to make themselves visible to potential pupils and guests.
“There turned out to be a real need in the market to connect people who want to try new things with passionate people who want to host them,” Lake said.
Many of the hosts are professionals in their field and the workshops are often affiliated with trade associations, vetted by Fieldtripp for the quality of the user experience. Fieldtripp’s website allows you to browse your city’s offerings, with the price per person displayed right up front.
A daylong workshop in screenwriting, taught by a local award- winning screenwriter, will run you about $200 a head. A guided tour of the inner city’s murals with curator and public art expert Klara Manhal of the tour firm Art-Seen Vancouver will set you back $35 each. You can shop for classes, book and pay in minutes.
Fieldtripp takes a cut from 10 to 14 per cent of the course fee. For that, they help their hosts with content development and marketing, credit card processing and online registration, as well as delivering paying customers.
Art-Seen was founded earlier this year, so the marketing expertise and ecommerce tools provided by Fieldtripp are a blessing for such a young business, Manhal said.
“Currently, I am the company, but I plan to grow it and build a team,” she said. “Art-Seen collaborated with Fieldtripp to run seven tours for more than 100 people on August 20th for the Vancouver Mural Festival, and we have three more tours planned for September …
“I’m really focused on curating and because I worked in the public art field I know about that and culture policy. What I don’t know much about is marketing, social media and what it takes to grow.”