Case study · 2026 · Side Project
Collective
An art studio discovery portal for artists, and a full art studio management platform for owners. Free to use with only a 1% fee on charges.
- Role
- Founder & Design Engineer
- When
- Oct 2026 – now
- Status
- Launching November 2026
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The problem
Community studios (ceramics, print, wood, photo) juggle memberships, class sign-ups, waivers and door access across a pile of separate tools. And if you move to a new town, there's no good way to find one. Worse yet, all major existing platforms are too expensive and/or too restrictive in their scope and features.
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What I built
A studio admin for the whole operation
Memberships and billing, classes and events with checkout and waitlists, equipment booking with safety sign-offs, private lesson requests on a drag-select calendar, payouts, and document signing on open-source Documenso.
Door access tied to the books
Schlage and Yale smart locks connect through Seam, so a lapsed payment or missing waiver turns a member’s code off automatically.
A public map of studios
An AI research and verification pipeline on Google Places and Census geocoding, with Claude checking each result, seeds the public studio index and the 3D globe.
Members run their own account
Members pause or cancel their membership, ask for a plan change, update their card, see their charges, set their door code, book equipment and sign waivers on their own, at every studio they belong to.
Payments on Stripe Connect for a 1% fee
Studios are paid out directly through Stripe Connect. Memberships, day passes, classes and lessons charge the card on file, and refunds and failed-payment retries happen in the admin.
Every studio already listed nationwide
All community art studios are already listed with accurate information, and owners can claim their page for free anytime. They prove it with a code sent to the studio's email, website domain or phone, and once approved the listing becomes a live studio.
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