To all the mints of the world: Welcome to co-create!
When thinking of coin collecting we rarely think of it as a platform or ecosystem although it has all the relevant features of a business ecosystem since the network of organizations – including suppliers, distributors, competitors, government agencies, collectors, numismatists, and so on – is involved in the delivery of commemorative and collector coins and services related to those.
The digitalization is an opportunity for the whole coin collecting market to utilize more efficiently this ecosystem structure what we already have and start to operate as a digital platform – a business model that creates value by facilitating and enabling exchanges and interaction between different ecosystem actors. The key is to create value that attracts users to the platform.
Mint of Finland introduced an initiative for digitizing coin collecting and invited all the mints in the world to co-create. The mint continues looking for other mints to be the strategic partners to create the basis for the whole service and benefit the most. Besides partnering Mint of Finland has hired a new Head of Digital Development Olli Aurola to lead company´s digital development.
We interviewed Olli Aurola more on digitizing coin collecting.
- Tell us a little bit about yourself?
My professional background is from software and services. I have worked for large multinational companies and for start-ups alike. When it comes to mobile apps and services, I have extensive experience from b
uilding products from scratch, growing userbase and selling SaaS solutions to businesses. In my free time I am doing all sorts of sports and spending time with my two kids.
- How do you build a digital platform?
Through extensive market studies we have discovered that there is potential in the collector coin market for digital services for coin collectors. The grand idea is to create a digital home for collectors that will benefit the entire coin collecting ecosystem. Important thing to understand is that the traditional seller to buyer model will transform in the platform into planning the interaction. So, it is not about straightforward profit via transactions, but designing a well-balanced body that will increase the total value of the platform and its key stakeholders. It is kind of super-innovative ecosystem where each connection is benefitting the other. One of the special features of the platforms is to contribute also with something else than with monetary assets for example with physical networks, user acquisition channels, content and data. Let´s join our forces!
- What is the current state of digitizing coin collecting?
We want to create together an application loved by collectors that will help them in their hobby, bring them closer as a community and create new business opportunities for mints. We have done our homework and we now know what kind of features collectors are interested in. We are now in the designing phase creating the UX/UI of the service and the next big milestone is to start actually coding the app and its backend.
Got interested? Please, contact Olli Aurola, Head of Digital Development @ Mint of Finland, email: olli.aurola@mint.fi, tel: +358504860056
