Ubooker is making waves! We are happy to share an English translation of our latest feature in the German industry publication, Textilwirtschaft 

MARKET PLACE FOR FASHION TALENT 

"We want to become the Booking.com of fashion"

By Tobias Bayer

Friday, 08 July 2022

In the fashion industry, creatives like photographers and videographers are often poorly paid and have to wait a long time to receive their money. The company Ubooker, founded by model Claudia Wagner, has set out to change that. After setting up a platform for models, it is now expanding its services to creative professions through a partnership with Le Book. 

They started with models. Now they are including photographers, videographers, make-up artists and PR specialists. The platform Ubooker, founded by German models Claudia Wagner and Diana Gärtner and whose partners include Diesel creator Renzo Rosso, is transforming itself into a one-stop shop for creative talent in fashion.

The platform, which went live in 2017, has partnered with Le Book. Le Book is a directory of leading creative talent, published in glossy print format, and is considered as the go-to reference in the fashion industry. Le Book also hosts the Connections fair, where exhibitors from the creative scene present themselves to potential customers.

The partnership is built upon Le Book using Ubooker's platform. The two parties bring different know-how to the table. Le Book has the network and enjoys strong credibility in the creative world, while Ubooker is very technologically savvy.

In practical terms, this means that creative talent can be booked digitally from now on.
"This is significantly faster. We also make sure that the talents get paid quickly," Ubooker co-founder Wagner told TW. Her vision: "We want to become the Booking.com of fashion."

Together with CEO Nicola Scagnolari, Claudia Wagner has set herself the goal of making a large part of the fashion world more transparent and thus enforcing fairer working conditions.

It is an open secret that models are often paid insufficiently and have to cede a large part of their remuneration to agencies. The situation is similar for many creative professions. They are often freelancers who fight for every assignment in difficult economic times, and are accordingly forced to accept very low conditions.

With Ubooker, Wagner and Scagnolari enable talents to get in touch with brands directly. The platform sees itself as a tech company à la Farfetch. "We are a curated marketplace. What can be automated, we automate," said CEO Scagnolari, who is banking on artificial intelligence in the future: "Our model can be scaled."

Since its launch five years ago, the platform has made a name for itself. Around 1800 models are registered on the platform, and 300 clients use the platform regularly. They include brands, but also online retailers like Luisaviaroma and Yoox Net-a-Porter, who find and book models for their campaigns and photos via the site.

Ubooker ensures lower agency fees, faster payments and also security, as clients are pre-certified. Instead of 30% to 50%, Ubooker only takes a 10% fee. While it is quite common in the fashion industry to pay the models only after three months, the payment via Ubooker is already received in the talent’s bank account after seven to ten days. In order to give customers flexibility and at the same time not make the models wait for the money, CEO Scagnolari is currently in the process of setting up a contract with a buy now, pay later provider.

For traditional intermediaries such as model and creative agencies, Ubooker is of course a threat, as their services are threatening to become obsolete and their margins are coming under pressure. On the other hand, Ubooker is also bringing itself into play as an ally here. After all, the platform allows agencies to present the talents they have under contract via a plug-in. If they are booked, the agencies receive a part of the commission.

For the original, German article, visit the publication’s site here: https://www.textilwirtschaft.de/business/news/marktplatz-fuer-fashion-talente-wir-wollen-das-booking.com-der-mode-werden-236538