The idea for a website providing information on castings and auditions was born in 1997 while Anna-Clara Blixt Modin worked as a musical performer. She realized just how difficult it was for her and her colleagues to find out where auditions were taking place and where someone was looking for artists and decided to start compiling this kind of information herself. The magazine The Spotlight was born and sent by post once a month. But this was a slow and expensive way to spread the information, especially as so many castings are held at short notice and a printed magazine couldn't keep up with these.
The internet, just gaining global popularity, was the ready answer. Anna-Clara teamed up with Thomas Flores, another professional musical performer who also created websites for the internet. He had set up MusikalNet, a Scandinavian information website for musical performers that also published auditions and castings.
Together they created the new website StagePool, which was published in April 2000. Now information could be accessed and updated 24 hours 7 days a week. The website immediately became a success and the magazine The Spotlight was history. Despite the burst of the New Economy bubble Anna-Clara began to look for investors and StagePool could be launched as a proper company - StagePool AB – with three full-time employees and an office in Stockholm City.
Anna-Clara and Thomas knew that a service like StagePool would be popular outside of Scandinavia as well. With the financial help of ABBA-legend Björn Ulvaeus who invested in the company, a new improved website was launched in 2001 and a German-language version created. With the help of Nicole Freialdenhoven, German correspondent for British musical magazine "Musical Stages", the German branch of StagePool opened in late 2001 in Aachen.
During the last three years business has been continually expanded as StagePool kept growing in Scandinavia and the German-speaking region. StagePool Scandinavia now has six employees working in Stockholm and StagePool Germany three employees in Cologne with correspondents contributing information from all over Europe. Now is the time for the next step – a much requested English-language version that will help performers from all over Europe to find information on auditions and castings in Europe.
