In short
- The catalogue has one agency in Heerenveen: Echtemensen.com, a model and casting agency.
- It has six boards: women, men, kids, commercial, talent and sport.
- It appears in search results for many cities but has one office, in Heerenveen.
Echtemensen.com
Heerenveen is a town in the province of Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands. Our catalogue has one of the country's 100 agencies here. The catalogue lists every business that represents models; we do not vouch for them, and each profile shows what we found, good and bad.
The name of Echtemensen.com is Dutch for "real people", and that describes the business exactly. The agency presents itself as a model and casting agency where everyone is of equal value. Agencies of this kind supply clients not with catwalk models but with people of every age and look for advertising, video and television. The catalogue gives it six boards: women, men, kids, commercial, talent and sport. The company is Echtemensen.com B.V., and the office is at Burgemeester Falkenaweg 54, office 2.9 B.
One agency, many city names
Search for a model agency in almost any Dutch town and one of the first results is often a page of this agency carrying that town's name. There is such a page for Amsterdam too, although the agency has no office there. While compiling the catalogue we saw that outside the Amsterdam area a large share of search results belongs to just a few firms working nationwide, and this is one of them.
That is neither good nor bad; it only needs to be read correctly. For a commercial agency what matters is not where you live but whether you can get to the shoot, so its file is drawn from the whole country. On the other hand, you can meet the agency in person only in Friesland. That is why this catalogue record is on the Heerenveen page and not the Amsterdam one.
We put no press reports about the agency and no fees for applicants in the catalogue, because we have no reliable data on them. The practical advice is the same as everywhere: the Dutch police write that a reliable agency covers the price of the first photo session itself and takes it out of later earnings.
Other markets
- Leeuwarden has Jamm Models, a Frisian agency working since 1979 that stages its own fashion shows.
- Surhuisterveen has Margreet Models, which scouts new faces for Amsterdam agencies.
- Amsterdam has 50 agencies, half the country's catalogue.
How to get started
- When you fill in the form, say what you can do besides posing: sport, acting, languages. For commercial work that matters more than height.
- Ask whether a profile in the file or photos cost anything, and how much.
- If you are registering a child, ask who will arrange the Labour Authority exemption on the day of the shoot.
- Before accepting a booking, find out the fee, the commission and whether travel is paid.
- What is regulated in the Netherlands and what is not is explained in the guide Modeling agencies in the Netherlands.