Frab's has arrived in Rome!

There is one thing we like to repeat: we were born in the network, but we live on networks. And when we talk about networks, more than the interconnections that travel in the ether, we refer to networks made up of people and encounters, casual or otherwise. We refer to that famous social capital that was so dear to my professor of Sociology at the Triennale, with his countless quotes from Putnam, and whose immense value I learned, growing up.

It is precisely with this in mind that last Saturday we launched a Rome the first (hopefully many) structured collaboration that allows us to be present not only in the ether, but also in the physical world. They are the boys of Lab606, coworking in the Capitoline city located in via Monti Tiburtini 606, and the project we worked on together is called Frab's Space.

Gathered by ideas, passions and desire to create culture, a space was born from Lab606 where you can find a selection of magazines from our catalog that can be browsed, touched and purchased directly on site but, the magic of the internet, paid on our site thanks to convenient QR codes and a click on your smartphone. This computer devilry I discovered is called digital commerce, it seems to be a widespread practice in the States and China, but you find a bit of distrust in our part of the world. We at Frab's, however, love challenges, so we decided to bring the first digital commerce experiment applied to publishing. 

You may be wondering why, well the answer is simple. There is a lot of talk about the crisis in the sector, about bookstores that go out like matches in the wind, about readers who don't read, publishers who publish too much, the internet that kills. Never anyone who, behind the rhetoric, proposes solutions, never anyone who utters that wonderful word that it is INNOVATION.

So we decided to try it ourselves, which being a company born in bootstrapping (another concept that I have only recently learned and which, basically, means being entrepreneurs with few economic resources, reinvesting all the proceeds in the company) we first needed to grow, but to do it in a sustainable and new way and what is there new to digital commerce?
We are "booksellers" 3.0, always available, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to give advice, tell wonderful magazines, research truly unobtainable products in Italy that add value to our work and your passions and collections. Human contact on Frab's is not lacking, the dozens of customers who every month receive our magazines accompanied by our letters know it, and it will not fail even at Lab606 where, from Monday to Friday with continuous hours, you will find wonderful and very nice guys ready welcome you.

Having said this and with the awareness of how complicated it is to innovate in this country, we have gladly accepted this risk because we strongly believe in the potential, primarily cultural, of independent periodical publishing.

Agnese Porto and Gianmaria de Gaspari (RVM HUB), Alice Scornajenghi (Bones) Valeria Guerrisi and Isidoro Galluccio (Panteon Magazine) and Alessandro Mancini (Artwave.it) who together with us and the many speakers (including editors, journalists and industry professionals) took stock of the situation in publishing today.

At the end of the talk we came to the conclusion that print media is alive and well, indeed it is experiencing an unexpected ferment, that hyper-specialization wins against generalist culture, that new editorial offices live online because they have collaborators all over the world, and that the internet can and must be a precious ally of paper because it helps to promote it, to reach market niches and the very young, yes the very young, who fall in love with the scent of ink again precisely because, digital natives, they know how to appreciate the charm and beauty of something that, contrary to their smartphones, remains, forcing long times and suitable spaces of use.

Let's start this new adventure with the heart beating to the rhythm of the keys on the keyboard that we use every day to reach you. The card is alive. Long live the paper… long live the internet! 

Anna