Interview with Mari Luz and Andrew Trotter - Co-founders of OPENHOUSE Magazine

Andrew Trotter and Mari Luz are the co-founders of OPENHOUSE Magazine, which has a great concept. It helps people interested in art, design and gastronomy connect and have unique and enriching experiences in the city they live or when traveling around the world.

Photography by Yanina Shevchenko www.yaninashevchenko.com

What is OPENHOUSE Magazine?

OPENHOUSE Magazine is a twice yearly publication, that looks to bright, creative people from around the world, that open their homes or their private spaces to the public, to make different activities about gastronomy, art and design. Our magazine is also a guide to their secret loved places in their towns that people can visit.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Andrew Trotter is a designer from the UK and Mari Luz a photographer from Spain. We started to share a house 6 years ago in Barcelona, and after a year we started the Openhouse Project, opening our home as a gallery of photography, and together with Ana Shultz and Nobu Kawagoe, we also made talks, concerts, dinners and sushi parties.

Why and how did you start OPENHOUSE Magazine? Were you working at another job at the time?

Openhouse, the magazine, grew from our project in Barcelona. The project became quite the talk of the town. Over the three years that we were open, more that 4,500 people passed through our doors.

We met so many wonderful people, some became new friends, and we started to learn about more people around the world with similar projects so we decided to put it down on paper. That is how OPENHOUSE magazine was born.

We both continue to pursue our careers and are involved in a lot of projects around the world. Andrew is a designer and Mari Luz is a photographer.

Photography by Yanina Shevchenko www.yaninashevchenko.com

How did you market and promote Openhouse magazine when you first started?

We raised money through crowdfunding to start Openhouse magazine. Through the large following we had, and a new crowd that we reached we were able to gain enough to get going. We talked to bloggers, other magazines and news papers to reach out to help promote us, then the rest was quite organic. Actually from day one the whole process has been easy flow, and things just happened.

Here's a short video we did for our crowdfunding campaign when we started.

What's your advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Do what you believe in, don’t do something that you are not passionate about. When there is passion and love for a project, people feel things and are more willing to be a part of what you are doing. As with every project or company you need to put a lot of work into it.

Have a sneak peek at the latest issue of OPENHOUSE magazine :

Photography by Yanina Shevchenko www.yaninashevchenko.com

If you're interested in learning more about OPENHOUSE magazine and their events, you can visit their website at www.openhouse-magazine.com