The origins of Collectody

In our first blog post "We are Collectody" we briefly introduced ourselves and told you about our own passions for collecting. So far so good, but why did this actually result in a product? That is what we're going to tell you now!

What do you typically struggle with as a busy collector? This can easily be demonstrated with a few examples:

• Postcards: You easily underestimate how many postcards you already possess after a very short time! Such a collection grows incredibly quickly ... And let's be honest, it's usually just like vacation photos that are stored in masses and unsorted somewhere on a hard drive: You don't usually look at them anymore, or at least only very, very rarely. Keeping an overview of your own collection (or more realistically: collections) is therefore difficult or time-consuming. Not to mention cards that you keep for yourself to send or swap. You can probably already guess what all of this boils down to...
• Music: As a passionate music lover, you certainly want to keep track of everything. Both the special gems in your own collection as well as everything you're still missing for your (collector's) happiness. Oh, and where do you actually note down what you would like to receive from family and friends for your next birthday? Again, you can probably already imagine how this has contributed to the creation of Collectody.
• Books and movies: As your collection grows, you can no longer remember everything. Do you always want to rummage through the cupboard to find out whether you already have the latest season of your current favorite TV show or whether you just streamed it in advance? And what about the movies and books you've lent to friends? Can you remember them all? And where do you note down that the latest volume of your favorite book series will be published in a few months?

With just one collection, this can certainly be managed on paper or with digital notes. With multiple and extensive collections, all of this quickly becomes a challenge - especially as we all (unfortunately!) can't be spending time on our hobbies 24/7.

All the challenges described were ultimately calling for one thing: a digital solution that is intuitive, modern and time-saving - and it had to be a single one , for everything.

Especially the last two points, i.e. the time savings and the possibility of bringing all collections together in one place, are particularly important to us:

• For instance, when I looked at how much time I was spending - unnecessarily - managing my postcard collection, it could take a bit of the fun away from time to time. Do I already have the card that someone else is offering to swap in my collection or not? Do I have something myself that the other person could use? Is this card I've just discovered in the souvenir store actually new to my collection or do I already have it and just can't remember? Each time this led to a lot of searching, checking various lists and galleries or buying on suspicion, because you obviously can't just walk past it, can you? It's a long, time-consuming journey to the actual goal of swapping with someone else or buying a new piece for your own collection. We haven't even touched on the subject of “adding” new objects to the collection here - you can spend as much time as you like on this too. And between job, family, household, and hobbies, this is what we all have the least of: Time!
• Secondly, like many other people, we collect all kinds of different things. Of course, there is a way to manage everything individually, but do I really want to manage each type of collection differently? Rearrange myself every time I switch from one collecting passion to another? Or be annoyed that I can do or set certain things for one collection, but not for another? This is far too complicated! Everything in one application would be ideal, wouldn't it?

Both of our personal and professional passion for digital products ultimately did the rest and so we decided to simply build something on our own. With quite a bit of prior knowledge of coding and marketing, we got to work ... and of course it took MUCH longer than we would have liked. It's like they say: you overestimate what you can do in a year (especially if you do it part-time), but underestimate what you can do in 10 years... if you stick with it. And it's true. It wasn't easy, but we stuck with it. And that's why we now have this still quite small product, which has already brought us a great deal of joy and saved us a lot of time. We hope that you like it just as much and that it will make your collecting a little more efficient - and that you will therefore in the future be less occupied with administration and much more with your actual passion!

Of course, we are by no means finished yet, neither with regard to the collection areas nor the functionalities around them. But we'll save that for another time.