Cherry on top
The founder of Cherrydeck — a platform dedicated to connecting creatives to brands and businesses — talks inspiration and future plans with ALHAUS magazine.
More than 55,000 creative professionals have signed up with Cherrydeck; photo courtesy of Cherrydeck.
by Matthew Burgos
Philipp Baumgaertel had a vision that he kept turning over in his head repeatedly; it combined the words 'portfolios' and 'the best' but how the two knit together was something that eluded him. While he struggled, his wife stepped in with a thought-provoking suggestion: the concept of 'cherry-picking' (the process of curating) married with the verb 'to deck' (to adorn something with beauty). He took it up, fused the two concepts and commenced his lifelong mission to spotlight creative professionals across the world. Cherrydeck was born in 2017.
The platform's mission is simple: “Cherrydeck aims to connect creative professionals with brands and businesses worldwide. Our goal is to build a community where photographers, videographers and models can showcase their work and provide a space where brands can discover them.
Cherrydeck's existence stemmed from Philipp’s hard-fought experience of searching for photographers around the world for a previous job. He needed a drone specialist in Miami, an underwater photographer in Mexico and an interior photographer in Berlin. “All the available platforms were either very localised (meaning only for a specific country), hard to navigate, or simply had average talent. With Cherrydeck, I wanted to make sure to have a structured search filter across the world with visually driven results. After all, humans can judge style in a few seconds, which can be a primary factor in the booking process,” Philipp explains.
Four years since its conception, more than 55,000 creative professionals — from photographers to models — have signed up to publish portfolios, connect with brands and businesses and ultimately win more clients. The tailored search filter has granted brands and businesses access to talent based on their project’s requirements, a win-win situation drawn from Philipp’s desire to invest in “a simple search engine for visually driven businesses.”
Philipp Baumgaertel established Cherrydeck in 2017; photo courtesy of Cherrydeck.
When asked what feature creatives should keep an eye on via Cherrydeck, Philipp doesn't hesitate. “The branded stock for sure. It works differently than regular shoots: you independently offer produced content to a brand or business and they can buy it multiple times. It means less payout in the beginning, but more later on.” Many Cherrydeck creatives have already produced content for over ten brands, he points out, building a consistent revenue stream of multiple smaller payouts without having to put in any additional work.
As to the future, the Cherrydeck cogs are already whirring to develop Private Content Marketplaces, in which every brand has the chance to collect and buy custom and exclusive content from creatives. In Philipp’s vision, such a feature will make it easier for creatives to collect licenses, have multiple clients at once and get rid of complex shoot plans.
Cherrydeck aims to bridge talents across the globe and their technology scales well across multiple languages and industries. Users might find their next hairdresser here — or maybe an event photographer for a fashion show. Whatever the talent gap is, Cherrydeck hopes to bring it where it's needed.