Last night The CRAVE company launched its first edition of the CRAVEbook in Europe, Amsterdam. CRAVE Amsterdam, The Urban Girl’s Manifesto is the ultimate guide to the places women crave in Amsterdam. Over 150 female entrepreneurs showing their businesses in and around Amsterdam, from shop owners to coaches from chocolate and beverage to cosmetics and Idea concepts. It is all there and waiting for you!
We are at the Hotel Casa 400 in Amsterdam waiting to kick off…
We found our way through the oranges and limes to the press room. Melody Biringer, the founder of the CRAVE company, states that Amsterdam was the ‘real mission’ and that it took her eight years to finally get there. You can see that she is very proud that it’s been accomplished and introduces several women who joined the CRAVE Amsterdam guide to say something about their businesses.
In the spotlights
Catriona Ravelli is the owner of ZZP Adviescafé and talks about a new concept called LaptopLounge where we will have our drinks later on. Margriet Darwinkel from Happy Family Life mentions the Family Organizer and that it is all about ‘back to the basics’ and parenting from the heart. Antoinette Gast from Tuyu started her own business in developing business gifts when she was looking for a job. For her Tuyu is the combination of ‘helping other people’, ‘business sense’ and ‘beautiful products’. And the website for mothers and pregnant women called Trotsemoeders.nl is founded by proud mother Mira Ahles. She accentuates how difficult it is for her, as a mother of three little children and having her own business, to keep her household tide and clean. What started as a joke on twitter popped up as the ‘Club van slechte huisvrouwen’ and already is a huge success that led to radio interviews and is booming in the media at this moment. After all the enthusiastic talks from these entrepreneurs we are invited for the Book Launch and drinks in the Laptop Lounge.
LaptopLounge
The LaptopLounge is a new concept owned by Marijke Krabbenbos from IdeaCompany and Catriona Ravelli from ZZP Adviescafé. The Laptop Lounge is located in the bar of Hotel Casa 400. The concept is about giving you a place to work and connect with other people. You can either work there on your own, join for plenary coffees and lunches if you like, have brainstorm sessions with others or simply share ideas. It’s all about Working & Connecting with the idea that everyone can learn from each other! You can become a member via www.laptoplounge.nl or just get a day card at the hotel reception. The atmosphere in the Laptop Lounge is excellent and a good combination of feeling at home and work vibes. And now it’s filled with all the business girls and a few men. You can get drinks at the bar, plates with sushi from Sushi Time, little exquisite treats from Lombardo’s, and other finger food comes by, including the fabulous raw pie chocolates from Diana Store’s Raw Superfoods. Let the CRAVE party start!
Welcome CRAVE Amsterdam
Melody Biringer welcomes us all and tells what inspired her to found the CRAVE company. Her whole life she lived in Seattle running her businesses and mainly saw her best friends just twice a year. That was not acceptable and she threw a party for all of them and the CRAVE party had been born and since then held every month. When she got to know The Netherlands she fell for the Dutch cookies ‘stroopwafels’ at Schiphol and had similar feelings over here as she has in Seattle. Basically it felt like home coming. She rented a flat for nearly three months and learned to ride a bike the way Dutch people do. Finally she brought the Orange Bikes from Tulpfietsen to Seattle as well! Here in Amsterdam she was wondering “where are all the female entrepreneurs?” and decided to bring CRAVE to Amsterdam. She brought CRAVE to more than twenty cities in the US, two in Canada and Amsterdam is the first one in Europe. She emphasizes that she wants to start a movement in Amsterdam. Melody gives a special thanks to her fabulous team and asks them to come on stage.
CRAVE Amsterdam team
Cristina Stoian is introduced as ‘the glue that holds everything together’. She had much fun taking all the pictures for the CRAVE Amsterdam book and it helped starting her own photography business with Crisspix. She thanks all the photographers who helped and assisted her with a special thanks to Paul Butterfield who was her mental coach.
Isrid van Geuns comes up and expresses that she likes the effect of meeting through social media. She started 1,5 year ago again as a female entrepreneur with IS WORKS and she met many new women that are all so enthusiastic. Her moto is “Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love”. She is proud about the CRAVE Amsterdam guide and states we all should make a platform by doing things together and bundle our strengths.
“They’re all great women. Why didn’t I know them before”, says Athalie Stegeman from Lotus Living, referring to the period when she just met some female entrepreneurs through CRAVE. There now are 1200 people that are interested in CRAVE and they start connecting through the guide and CRAVE platform. She learned that all the business women have such great spirit! Athalie finishes her talk with “Bring us forward with all we do.”
Melody again thanks her team and emphasizes we should pass the CRAVE word!
While the CRAVE party continues and all women are connecting, searching for new contacts, looking for old ones and catching up with friends, the drinks and bites passes. At the end there is even a bicycle to win for all the ladies who handed in their business cards. The bicycle is sponsored by Marjolijn van Oordt, the owner of Tulpfietsen. And the lucky winner is Fenje Bolt from TEA BAR. Congrats Fenje! When leaving the LaptopLounge there are CRAVE Amsterdam give-away tea bags from the tea bar to bring home with you.
This is what CRAVE is all about, and the CRAVE Amsterdam book launch is a great success!
________________
This post was written for the CRAVE company by Marjon Parmentier, who worked as editor for the online magazine vrOuw.nl and was responsible for partnerships, public relations, writing articles about spirituality and female related subjects and other content for the website. With her business background she thought that what she did at vrOuw.nl, she could do for various websites/organizations. She is passionate about people and why they do what they do!
Therefore she recently started PARMsupport in order to support other persons with their organization/website by various activities, such as supplying content for websites, writing articles, workshops, project support and other. For her it is all about People, Communication, (Business) Spirituality, Female Strength (girl power), Eco/ sustainability and Health. Soon you can check her out via www.PARMsupport.com.
CRAVE Amsterdam
CRAVE Amsterdam
Pinterest
YouTube
CRAVE Blog
We love to follow our hearts and practice the work we are passionate about. But once you’re up and running you need more time. Time for a lot of things that belong to successful entrepreneurship. Think about PR, administration and legal services. Our advice is to consult these business specialists. In daily life we love to focus on the opportunities that lie ahead of us. But the reality is that we run business risks and we need to protect us against them so that we will not be faced with issues that nail down our business pleasures. Did you know that when you hire an employee you need to hand over a starting-letter within the first month of employment? This letter insures against legal responsibilities you may encounter. Would you forget the worker to sign into the pension funds and the worker passes away, you are obliged to pay survivor’s benefit for life. These are risks that the entrepreneur is often not aware about and can affect your business operations dramatically.
Faced with a health crisis back in the early ’90s, 
