Running workshops in Milan: how to start while it's still early

To run workshops in Milan you need four things: a format that wraps up in a single session, a place to hold it, a date you can repeat and a page where people book and pay a deposit online. As of October 2026 there is not a single bookable workshop in Milan on Handsome: whoever publishes now has nobody ahead of them on the city page. That does not mean customers on autopilot; it means starting before everyone else, and the steps are below.

Six steps to run workshops in Milan

1. Choose a short format with a stated result: what participants take home.
2. Decide where: your own studio, a space rented by the hour or, for company events, the company's premises.
3. Set Milan-friendly times: after office hours or on Saturday morning, with the nearest metro stop and the walking time.
4. Choose your tax path: Apprentice without a VAT number, within set limits, or Maker with a VAT number.
5. Open your free profile, connect Stripe and prepare the workshop as a draft.
6. Fill the first date with people who already know you, before expecting anything from the internet.

1. A format that finishes in one session

Your first workshop is not for showing everything you can do, but for getting someone who has never touched your material to the end, with a piece they are not embarrassed to show. Start from the smallest object that is still complete: a plate rather than a dinner set, a leather key ring rather than a bag, a hand-stitched notebook rather than a bound book. Keep the variables that make a session run long, such as different sizes or steps that take years of practice, for later formats.

The result should be stated up front, not discovered at the end: the workshop form on Handsome has two fields for exactly this, “Cosa impari” and “Cosa porti a casa” (what you learn, what you take home), shown on the public page as “What you'll learn” and “What you take home”. If the piece needs firing, drying or finishing, in the same form you state whether it is collected a few days later or shipped, and from your dashboard you let participants know when their pieces are ready.

2. Where: your studio, a space by the hour or a company's premises

In Milan, space is the item that scares people most, and not always for good reason. There are three routes, and they are not mutually exclusive.

• Your own studio, if you have one and it can receive people. Before opening it to the public it is worth checking its permitted use and the formalities: they are set out in opening an artisan workshop in Milan.
• A space rented by the hour: shared studios, association halls, the back room of a like-minded shop. The sum that matters is not the hourly rate but how much it weighs on each seat sold, and it is explained in renting a space by the hour for a workshop in Milan.
• A company's premises: a company looking for a different afternoon for its team can ask for the workshop in its own space. Company events and private sessions are open to Makers with a VAT number, and Handsome handles company requests at every step: how those requests work is explained in company workshops in Milan.

Whichever route you choose, answer three questions before publishing: how many workstations you really have, where people wash their hands, and where coats and bags go. Count workstations, not square metres: each person needs their own stretch of bench and their own tools within reach.

3. Times and directions designed for Milan

People who live and work in Milan have little free time and plan it ahead. The slots that work are the ones that do not require taking time off: weekday evenings after work, starting around 7 or 7.30 pm and lasting two hours, and Saturday mornings, when there is room for a longer format. Publish a few weeks ahead: a free Saturday gets booked in advance, not on the day.

Then there is the city's calendar: in August Milan empties out, in April Design Week brings an audience looking for handmade work (in 2027 the Salone del Mobile runs from 13 to 18 April; see the guide on taking part in the Fuorisalone as an artisan), and in December a workshop where people make something to give away has one more reason to be booked.

Finally, directions, which in Milan make the difference between someone arriving on time and someone searching for you from the pavement. The workshop form has a field for exactly this, “Note per arrivare” (arrival notes), which appears on the workshop page: always include:

• The nearest metro stop, with the line and the walking time: for example “M2 Porta Genova, 6 minutes” or “M5 Isola, 4 minutes”.
• How to get in: many studios are in an inner courtyard or at the end of an entrance hall, so give the name on the intercom, the staircase and the floor.

4. With or without a VAT number

You do not need to register for a VAT number (Partita IVA) to run your first workshop, but you do need to know from the start which path you are on. On Handsome there are two.

• Apprentice, without a VAT number: you work on an occasional basis and can publish up to 5 workshops per calendar year, staying within 5,000 euro in fees per year. You run group workshops open to the public; to publish you need your Italian tax code and to accept the terms for occasional work.
• Maker, with a VAT number: no cap on the number of workshops, plus private sessions and company events. Before your first publication the Handsome team checks your VAT number, usually within 24 to 48 hours.

The full comparison is in Hobbyist or artisan? Which profile to choose. How you open a VAT number depends on the activity: for a business or craft activity you use the Comunicazione Unica d'Impresa (ComUnica), a single filing that opens the VAT number and registers you with the Business Register of the Milano Monza Brianza Lodi Chamber of Commerce; the AA9/12 form from the Agenzia delle Entrate, the Italian Revenue Agency, is for professional activities that do not require that registration. Which one applies to you, and under which tax regime, is something to settle with an accountant before your first date.

5. Free profile, Stripe connected, workshop in draft

Your Handsome profile is free and has no subscription fee. The list of what you need to fill it in, documents and photos included, is in what you need to join a workshop platform. What matters here is the order: you can build the workshop and save it as a draft at any time; to publish it, on top of a complete page with at least one photo of your own and a future date, you need three things.

1. The terms of service accepted and the tax details for your path: for Apprentices, your tax code and the terms for occasional work; for Makers, also your tax regime, e-invoicing code or PEC and registered address.
2. A verified VAT number, if you are a Maker.
3. Payments set up with Stripe: without it the workshop cannot be published, because customers' deposits would have nowhere to go. The steps are in connecting Stripe to get paid for workshops.

How payment works in practice: someone booking a group workshop pays a 10 euro deposit per seat online (for a private session the deposit is 25 euro) and pays you the rest in person on the day of the workshop. The deposit lands in full in your Stripe account, because Handsome keeps none of it: only Stripe's payment fees apply, as they do for anyone who accepts cards. The transfer to your bank goes out about 5 days after the workshop, and you follow the amounts from your dashboard, under Payments. Three days before the date, Handsome sends everyone who booked a reminder with the address and the balance to pay.

Cancellation rules are the same for everyone and are shown on the page before payment: for a group workshop, anyone who cancels at least 3 days ahead gets the deposit back in full, and after that they do not. For private sessions the window is 7 days. Subscriptions are optional and are for later, not for getting started: with a VAT number there is the Maker Pro plan, at 9.90 euro a month with the first month free or 95 euro a year; Apprentices have a separate annual plan, 49 euro in a single payment.

6. Your first ten participants come from you

A platform does not fill your first date, you do: a new page, in a city where nobody is searching for you by name yet, needs an initial push from people you can reach one at a time.

• People who already buy from you, at craft markets in Milan or online: a personal message with the link, not a generic post.
• Colleagues with a similar audience: a ceramicist and a florist, a bookbinder and a stationery shop. You swap a link, not a contact list.
• People walking past: a sign in the window or on your market stall with the date and the QR code of your Handsome profile, which you can make with any free generator. With Maker Pro, a ready-to-print QR poster is in your dashboard, under Tools.
• Groups that already exist: friends looking for a different kind of birthday, colleagues who want to do something together after work, booking several seats on the same date.

Once you publish, your dashboard has a promotion kit with the workshop link ready to copy. And open a single date, two at most: one full session is worth far more to you than four half-empty dates.

Being among the first in a big city

Arriving early does not keep you at the top for ever: the order of workshops on Handsome does not reward seniority. It does give you two things that those who come later will not have.

The first is visibility without competition. Today anyone opening the Milan page finds no bookable workshops: the first one to appear is the only one. When the page starts to fill up, the order will follow set rules:

1. Workshops with a bookable date come first: one with no future dates never goes ahead of one with an open date.
2. At the top are paid promotions, marked “Featured”, followed by workshops from Maker Pro members.
3. Within each group the nearest date counts; for the same date, how complete the page is (your photo, introduction, a cover you uploaded yourself, gallery, description, what you learn); then reviews. A low price gives no advantage at all.

The second is reviews. On Handsome a workshop can only be reviewed by someone who booked it, with a confirmed booking, and only after the date: the request goes out by email one or two days later. Reviews build up one session at a time, and when Milan has several workshops in your craft, yours will be the one with reviews already written.

Being first does not bring bookings on its own, though: the city page is new and its audience is built together with the Makers who publish there. Want to see where your workshop will appear? Look at the Milan workshops page: today it is empty, and that is exactly the point.