EmptyChair builds marketplace to book and host workshops and classes

by Startacus Admin

EmptyChair are building an online marketplace, but not for rooms, cars or beauty treatments, but instead to change the way people discover, book and host workshops & classes in London.

“The problem is that people in a busy city like London don’t have much time” explained Charlotte Leysen, former banker and now co-founder of EmptyChair. “This is especially true when you are looking for something new to learn or exciting to do. When you do find something after spending hours searching through google and old forums, you spend ages looking for times and dates that work for you. After all that, you still don’t know if the workshop is any good and often find yourself navigating old booking systems that don’t load.”

To address this, EmptyChair have created an app where users can browse day by day, hour by hour, all the incredible workshops and classes that happen in London. These workshops are added by ‘partners’ in real-time, providing simple information like what you can expect to learn, what you should bring and where the workshop takes place, offering anything from coffee tasting, life drawing, poetry and fishing to beer yoga and film directing classes.

Because EmptyChair allows anyone to host a class through the platform, people who have traditionally been unable to monetise on their skills are now able host a class for the wider community. Whether you are a student looking to make some extra money, an independent professional or established studio – EmptyChair caters to you. “It’s a brilliant tool for me to manage my ‘empty chairs’, ensuring I run my classes at maximum capacity every time” says Liza Active, a partner of EmptyChair who runs frequent boot camp and nutrition classes.

Former banker and co-founder of EmptyChair Kirill Stockmeier explained: “EmptyChair could not have arrived at a better time. Our research suggests that over £800m is spent on classes and courses each year in London alone and Londoners are increasingly looking to diversify their knowledge. EmptyChair is now there for them.”

Despite going up against traditional experience and discovery websites such as Groupon and Virgin Experience Days, co-founder Kirill says “these websites are still surprisingly static, often charge extortionate fees and are not very helpful in finding something that you will genuinely love.”

EmptyChair or ‘London’s best timetable’ as they are branding themselves, is currently only available on the Itunes App store, but they are planning to release the app on the Google Play store and to expand to mainland Europe by the end of the year.


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• #marketplace
• #shared economy
• #online marketplace
• #workshops
• #classes
• #emptychair
• #london

Published on: 14th September 2017