David Gilbert
David is Executive Chair of CultureLabel.com. This role uniquely combines David’s expertise in the Arts, store retailing, E-Commerce and Private Equity.
David is currently a Trustee and Chair of the Finance Committee of the Contemporary Arts Society, and a Director on boards at the Whitechapel Gallery and the Arts Council.
David has an outstanding track record within the retail industry. His career commenced with Boots, and was followed by 23 years with the Dixons Group where he became Managing Director of Currys. From 2002, David was Group Chief Operating Officer, with responsibilities including E Commerce. He then became Managing Director of Waterstones, following which he moved into Private Equity roles including German drugstore Ihr Platz (owned by Goldman Sachs) and Chairman of online camera retailer Warehouse Express (owned by Barclays Ventures). His current business roles include founder investor and advisor to Reevoo.com and non-executive at environmental company Regenersis.
David’s personal goal is to synthesize the economic worlds of arts, ecommerce and entrepreneurialism in order to transform the arts economy for the benefit of all stakeholders, from investors to artists. His unique range of skills and experience equip him more than adequately for the challenge.
Florian Wupperfeld
Florian is a co-founder of CultureLabel.com. He has worked as a brand and business developer for the past ten years with experience ranging from luxury and media brands to the culture industry.
Florian is consultant to Soho House Group, and Creative and Media Director of House Magazine, which was developed as a physical social media platform to connect members from around the world through an exploration of the thought of influencers from the creative industries around the world. He also developed international strategic brand partnerships including luxury, culture and lifestyle brands such as Adidas, Diesel, Agent Provocateur, Moet Hennessy and Royal Academy.
Florian has spent 10 years as a trend scout and he developed new platforms to enable brands to conquer high profile communities. His focus was developments in culture industry as well as researching new platforms for brand communications (blogs, PDA, social media) and the culture community (brand communications in the culture context). He was also instrumental in taking his findings to realization in communications campaigns for clients including BMW, mini, Rolls Royce, Maybach and SMART. His trend research for cultural communities was also used for briefs for packaging design for numerous in the lifestyle industry. Florian also contributed with articles in Viewpoint Magazine (trend publication) and with art publications such as ArtInvestor or jpeople.
Florian was the founder of RSVP Galleries in Munich, a non-profit interdisciplinary network, where he developed publications which were sold worldwide in places such as Collette Paris and 10 Corso Como, Milan.
Peter Tullin
Peter is a co-founder of CultureLabel.com is as passionate about the crossover where culture meets consumer culture. Over the last decade, Peter has worked with leading businesses and culture organisations to help them capitalise upon their shared objectives to create mutual benefit.
Peter was a lead architect of Release1.0 (www.releaseonedotzero.com), a new community-driven product development website that uncovers and promotes emerging design talent to the cultural sector. The initiative was co-developed with the ICA, London and launched at the 2008 London Design Festival.
As the former National Account Director at arts development agency Arts & Business (A&B), Peter brokered collaborations between a number of FTSE 100 companies and leading cultural institutions, such as the Royal Academy and LPO, worth several million pounds. He was instrumental in helping to develop a new commercial consultancy unit for A&B as part of a recent drive to generate new income channels for the charity.
During his tenure at A&B, Peter also played the lead role in the creative vision and commercial development of a proposed £20 million capital project to build an international centre of creativity in the Olympic regeneration zone, funded by an international property developer.
Peter is a regular speaker on the subject of business viability and cultural entrepreneurship at academic institutions such as Birmingham University and the University of the Arts, and as a presenter at industry conferences such as the Museums & Heritage Show and Marketing Week. He is also co-author of the book, Intelligent Naivety, on cultural entrepreneurship and co-editor of the blog of the same name exploring the connection between culture and consumers, identifying commercial opportunities for culture institutions.
Simon Cronshaw
Simon is a co-founder of CultureLabel.com. Possessing a strong track record in consumer insight, his specialist research area is in understanding the changing nature of cultural consumption, especially concerning digital supply and demand. He has worked with a wide range of culture institutions to devise positioning and revenue strategies, and to support the development of consumer-facing cultural content on the web.
Prior to creating CultureLabel, Simon headed up the research unit at Arts & Business, working with a number of internationally recognised management theorists, including a recent collaboration with Pine & Gilmore on the role of arts and culture in rendering authenticity for corporate brands.
Simon worked as a freelance specialist to develop a concept space for Cambridgeshire Libraries in the £220 million Grosvenor Grand Arcade retail development, and was the lead consultant for the MLA/Renaissance ‘Entrepreneurial Museum’ project (see www.InteliigentNaivety.com). He co-authored the book ‘Intelligent Naivety’ on cultural entrepreneurship and co-edits the blog of the same name, exploring the connection between culture and consumers and identifying commercial opportunities for culture institutions.
Simon graduated with first class honours in History from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and went on to complete his Masters in Creative & Media Enterprise at the University of Warwick. Topics of study included theories of creativity, managing intellectual property and creativity, the UK creative economy, plus a thesis exploring the strategies deployed by cultural entrepreneurs in order to move from idea generation to idea implementation. Today, he enjoys applying these strategies in the context of not-for-profit culture institutions.
