What is Creative Factory Rotterdam?

Leo van Loon

Creative Factory in Rotterdam is a hub used by 74 mainly creative businesses. It serves as a base for designers, music producers, fashion photographers, architects and others. The canal-side building, a former industrial silo, is owned by the city of Rotterdam – they bought it with the intention of building luxurious apartment houses in its place but it turned out it would cost 17 million Euros to knock it down. The building is massive – it has 5000 square metres and is 60 metres high. On the ground floor there is a club that can take 5000 people, and another club for 15 000 people on the top floor. More than 180 people work here on a daily basis. The idea behind Creative Factory is to encourage collaboration between small creative companies and large business companies. Our partners include big institutions such as KPMG, who provide consulting and accounting services and Rabobank, the biggest bank in the Netherlands. These companies offer their services to young businesses and help them grow faster. This is very important for new companies which lack contacts and are only learning how to run a business effectively. We also have interns from the Erasmus programme and local educational institutions working at Creative Factory. They help the creative businesses for example with doing their market research. Spaces on each floor tend to be shared by 3 to 12 companies, which makes it easier for firms based within the Creative Factory to develop collaborations – almost every company has by now worked on at least one project with or for someone else within the Creative Factory

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Leo van Loon

Leo van Loon

Co-founder and owner of Creative Factory in Rotterdam, Netherlands

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