Webshop publishes own magazine

A webshop is somewhat sterile, at least that´s what the people of online designshop Flinders think. The company, run by Geert-Jan Smits (45) is using part of an investment of millions to start a paper magazine, according to an article in Sprout.

The webshop in Zaandam, the Netherlands, was founded only recently in 2010, but is doing remarkably well. Whilst brick and mortar shops are going bankrupt and bol.com is still unprofitable, designshop Flinders is financially successful. Turnover is up 50% or more every year and reached 11 million Euro last year.

This week Flinders announced to have received an investment of 3 million euro from RTL Ventures, capital investor and part of media company RTL. RTL Ventures has bought itself a minority share in Flinders. Smits couldn´t tell Sprout about the size of the share.

Flinders will use the money for advertising, in print media and via RTL. The latter of course as part of the deal with RTL Ventures.

Smits believes in print. So  much so that he is going to publish his own magazine. In about three weeks the first Flinders magazine is said to be published. It will be a free magazine of 80,000 copies. Flinders customers will receive it with their order. Smits is planning to eventually include it in papers such as the Financieele Dagblad (Financial Times of the Netherlands), where Flinders´ target market is.

To enhance the “tangibility” Smits wants to further invest in design advice at home. He is also planning extra events in the only shop Flinders currently have in Zaandam. There are currently no plans for further shops. He does invest in an augmented reality project together with Amsterdam-based company Amikasa. “We want to use augmented reality to show a client what a piece of furniture would look like in their living room. It will show how it fits and if it works well in the room. I am expecting augmented reality to become really big in the near future. If it is a standard feature on an iPhone it will become huge.”