The Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs experience offered Roxana Luca, a new entrepreneur from Romania, a safe space for learning and innovation for her current student and entrepreneurial life and her future initiatives. The exchange helped Roxana overview her goals regarding the company she had already started and inspired her to make plans for a new business.
Roxana Luca is an art student following the Master Programme of Curatorial Practices and Art Management in Romania. She is an emergent entrepreneur who opened a start-up design and printing company called Omcuom. Roxana is also a curator at the Museum of Sacred Icon from Romania and works as an artist and photographer in diverse projects. She wanted to participate in the EYE programme because she was impressed by the programme’s learning structure and its cultural exchange dimension. Roxana was also interested in learning more about the publishing sector and how it works at a high level of proficiency.
With the support of Fundatia Danis, Roxana spent two months in Germany, being coached by an experienced entrepreneur – Luca Bendandi.
Luca Bendandi is an Italian designer, author, publisher, and Vetro Editions‘ founder, a publishing house based in Berlin. Vetro operates as a packager, agent, consultant, and publisher, offering a complete range of services needed for the conception, realization, production, marketing, and distribution of paper-made cultural artifacts. The business receives the suppor
t of an international network of collaborators from graphic design, typography, architecture, journalism, art, and fashion. Luca participated in a few other EYE exchanges in the past. This time was a more careful look over the contemporary art scene, which brought him in contact with Roxana.
During the two-month collaboration, the two entrepreneurs worked on packing, distributing, and organizing the publishing and promoting a process of an Augmented Reality Book launched by Vetro
Editions. There was a launching exhibition where Roxana took photographs and learned how to organize an event properly. She also organized an exhibition, as a curator, with the help of her host entrepreneur, Luca. An extra activity they worked on together was shaping ideas for the visual component of a design project about Algae/Seaweed that Luca proposed; after Roxana provided him with a visual presentation, he guided her in the design-making process.
The collaboration between the two entrepreneurs was successful and mutually beneficial.
Roxana learned all the processes behind book distribution and launching. Also, she gained great insights into what the publishing business sector deals with on a global scale while working with larger markets or more niched markets. Luca gave her a lot of information, resources, and relevant pieces of advice. Roxana also learned how to contact artists and curate exhibitions into a foreign cultural community. She made various contacts in all areas of the art world she was interested in (models, cinema entrepreneurs, artists, DJs, producers, cultural merchandisers, publishing houses managers, designers, etc.)
On the other side, Luca was happy to welcome Roxana’s fresh attitude in the art and the entrepreneurial world. He discovered some new interesting academic perspectives on the cultural world, and he got motivated to go further on his new designing book project about Algae, following Roxana’s contribution to this project.
“Luca is an inspiring entrepreneur in the field of publishing design and printing. He gave me insights and new perspectives on this field, of the most finesse level of involvement and seriosity. Also, he showed lots of trust in providing me the opportunity of curating a whole art exhibition, which was very demanding.” (Roxana Luca)
“The collaboration with Roxana was a dynamic exchange of cultural knowledge. It marked the quality time spent together by planning and preparing the cultural artifact in the publishing process and the creative achievements of organizing an art exhibition.” (Luca Bendandi)
EYE experience was fulfilling and offered a safe space of learning and innovation for Roxana, helping her with the current student and entrepreneurial life and future initiatives. The exchange supported Roxana to overview and review her business goals for Omcuom. She realized she would need more investments and a different strategy to fit into the publishing field, making her question and rethink her market intentions. After this experience, Roxana also intends to start a new company, a cafe with art and design books – a dedicated space to promote the books already designed and published by Luca and many other great workers in this field. She wants to promote the idea of exploring contemporary books and appreciating valuable designers and publishers who deserve more artistic autonomy and appreciation. Roxana would like to convince the Art Academy, where she currently studies, to develop a study program supporting the publishing sector.
For Luca, the EYE exchange proved valuable in building this potential to reach new markets and audiences with Roxana’s support, social promotion, and the new entrepreneur’s perspectives. Roxana’s views and suggestions about diverse publishing topics, including the need to reach even more striking the public, were excellently received as valuable feedback for Luca’s past or recent projects. At the same time, he was happy to share his vision with someone receptive to bolster existing knowledge regarding promotion or networking and use it efficiently.
