Online platform looks for the right fit and creative process
Artists have always had it tough. Negotiating price? The client demands half off. Joining a company? They expect a perfect CV. Collaborating? The contact is 50 miles away. Add lockdowns into the mix and it’s an industry low that hasn’t been seen in years.
Loominata means to address these problems, both age-old and new.
A Multi-Faceted Business
Pioneered by University of the Philippines Diliman engineering student Allen Joshua Dalangin, Loominata (from Lumen and Sonata, “light and sound”) is an online platform with customized services for both artists and customers. For clients, the site offers creative options by connecting them to partnered content creators, specializing in everything, from textiles and marketing, to digital arts and writing. They also provide an option to blend these services and select specific partners for a more seamless project.
Loominata gives artists the opportunity to join and grow with a community of like-minded individuals for free. Partners may choose to have their backgrounds and contact details posted on the website for everyone to view.
The platform also exclusively posts offers from clients to the artists, allowing them to decide which ones to take and privately give their counteroffers with relevant portfolios, away from competitors’s eyes.
Then the site will give the client a selection of artists interested in the project, encouraging to make the choice by right fit and merit. Dalangin said, “We have different thresholds on what we consider a fair price. We let our clients choose, focusing on the artists’ skill and not the price.”
Loominata can also close deals between the two parties by arranging meetings, making memorandums of agreement, and even representing their partner if requested. This method grants everyone a fair and surefire way of meeting the terms agreed on, while the platform itself collects only a small fraction of the mark-up for this service.
Humble beginnings
Before this, Dalangin began his entrepreneurship by running his own proofreading and writing service when he was only a teenager. By early 2020, COVID-19’s effect on the local art community was palpable, giving Dalangin another bright idea.
He gathered a few of colleagues and started Loominata, a company dedicated to lightening the load of artists in finding customers and collaborators. It took them a week to build the website and around a month to gather the initial set of staff and partners. “It was a natural evolution in this business to expand to other forms of art,” Dalangin said.
While the Loominata is as unique as it is diverse, the ultimate goal of the company is to further both the art and the artists in the Philippines, especially against the current problems they face as an industry.
Dalangin and his team are also set to host online art seminars to share the knowledge and skills their partners have. They are also developing an online crafts shop where artists can advertise and sell their products.
Artists have always had it tough, but they have always been artistic. Loominata is the perfect example of how creativity and innovation always go hand-in-hand no matter how large the issue to be faced.
For both the customer and the artist, Loominata allows that breath of freedom, away from the cookie-cutter and into the bespoke.
One can visit their website https://www.loominata.com/
