Help Launch Made Local Markets

Aim

To launch "Made Local Markets" across the UK to help support creatives further, via new market opportunities in high-profile locations

WHY CROWDFUND?

We're taking part in the "Back Her Business" collaboration between Crowdfunder & Natwest, where they will DOUBLE our fundraising efforts! As we successfully raised £540, Natwest have since matched this and have contributed £540 to our campaign, to get us to our initial target of £1080. THANK YOU!

We are now on track, and on a mission, to reach our stretch target of £2700. I really hope you can help us make this happen :)

WHAT ARE WE UP TO?

We are fundraising, to create even more new retail opportunities for makers, artists and small creative businesses across the UK, when we all come out of this together on the other side, into a new world!

We would like to launch Made Local Markets, as a complementary offering to our Made Local Pop-Ups. If we reach our target, we can get to work on building the market stalls themselves, ahead of launching (hopefully) later this year.

GET TO KNOW US FIRST

Here is a little insight into our journey so far...

Hello, I'm Megan. I started Curated Makers back in November 2017 on a market stall and took along 4 makers products to represent them on a market stall table. My goal was to provide a new income stream for small businesses, via innovative retail methods, that they could benefit from, without having to physically be there themselves!

This gave me a real flavour of how this concept could work which saw me expanded my vision. I wanted to offer a more innovative way to reach customers, on our main high-streets, that so desperately needed a sprinkling of small business magic on them, to keep them thriving! I knew that big businesses and small businesses could work together, to benefit all involved, so I asked! I got my first shot at the high-street with Debenhams in July 2018 and I represented over 30 small businesses within the pop-up, on the 3rd floor near the cafe and the loos!

I asked and asked and asked again for them to move us to the ground floor window spot, and after 3 weeks, they let us move for 1 week, it was incredible!!

It was an amazing experience for all involved and made my vision for Curated Makers become much clearer. This experience really proved to me the future of what Curated Makers could be for everyone involved; the makers, the retailers, the high-street, the customer and me! We were all winners, by collaborating and believing in supporting small. 

I set my heart on "popping-up" within the staple British high-street stores, that also valued and originated from UK made products. I pitched, presented, travelled, pitched, presented and pitched again! I'm happy to say that they too believed in Curated Makers and to date we have now hosted our "Made Local Pop-Ups" within M&S, John Lewis, Paperchase, Debenhams and Bents Garden Centre. It has been an incredible journey for myself and the makers that we represent.

I'm so pleased to say, that our customers love our pop-ups, as do the creatives that we work with. Don't just take my word for it...

At our pop-ups, we've tested a market style approach already, by inviting different makers to pop-up for 1 day within our pop-ups which has been well received. Due to space, we can only host 1 maker at a time though.

The interest we have had from the creative community has been phenomenal, so many small businesses would like to be a part of our pop-ups. We are working on increasing our capacity for pop-ups across the UK, but with the disruption of COVID-19, everything is on "pause" shall we say. We were hosting a pop-up within John Lewis in the Trafford Centre representing 40 local businesses when the virus hit, which saw us pop-down earlier than expected and now our income for Curated Makers has come to an extreme halt, with our overheads larger than they have ever been before.

SO WHAT NEXT?

Made Local Markets

The interest from the creative community has been incredible, and we've always spoken about hosting markets alongside our pop-ups, and we've been asked many a time! So...here we are, developing the concept so that we can offer Curated Makers, Made Local Markets across the UK, in the safe future! Here is the prototype of the market stall! We don't do things by halves, so of course we wanted a beautiful stand for our small business owners to stand at and have a great opportunity to present their brands and products. It may be painted, we're still deciding, but you get the jist! I hope you like them.

These cost ££'s to build of course, and with our income now none existent, we've taken the leap to go to our wonderful community, to hopefully help make these markets happen in the future. My partner Tom actually builds all of our fixtures and props, as he is a joiner by trade. So together, we design and build everything that goes into a Curated Makers event! It's very special working together and making this stand has been particularly fun as it needs to be flat packed for ease, as hopefully there will be around 30 stalls when we launch. We're not there just yet with the finalised design, but it's well on it's way.

WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP

So this is where you come in!

We’re calling upon our incredible community and fellow small business advocates, to help us get the ball rolling, for "Made Local Markets".

Materials for each stall costs £90, just for the materials, not including labour! So we're here today launching this Back Her Business Crowdfunder, to help raise funds to allow us to make these market stalls, in anticipation of life resuming at some point, so we can officially launch our market events! There are lots of conversations ongoing in the background about the locations, you'll have to trust me that they'll be great places, I'm not ready to share the locations with you just yet, but they'll be exciting, as always!

WHAT ARE WE UP TO?

OUR FIRST #POSTABLEPOPUP

To celebrate the launch of our first Crowdfunder, we aligned it with hosting our first ever #POSTABLEPOPUP

Our first ever postable pop-up launched on Instagram, the weekend of Saturday 16th + Sunday 17th May, and was open to ALL UK based small businesses, that can post their items safely to customers! This was a collaborative and community driven initiative. We encouraged every small business to get involved and setup a stall from their home or studio, take pictures, talk to camera about their products, share other small businesses, to create a buzz around shopping small at this time, connected via the hashtag #postablepopup and to hopefully make a few sales too! 

Participation didn't cost anything, however, we asked our fellow small businesses that got involved, to contribute £5, directly to this Crowdfunder, to help us achieve our ultimate goal of launching Made Local Markets.

The #POSTABLEPOPUP went so well, hundreds of small businesses got involved and over 2000 uses of the hashtag were recorded over the weekend. Thank you to everyone that got onboard, we look forward to running this again in the future. But for now, the focus is on reaching our target to launch Made Local Markets, with just over a week to go.

To make sore you know about our opportunities as they launch, please visit the Curated Makers website and SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST

So there you have it, thank you if you've made it this far. We are fundraising, to create even more new retail opportunities for makers, artists and small creative businesses across the UK, when we all come out of this together on the other side, into a new world!

SO WHAT ARE THE GOALS?

GOAL - £1080 (£540 match funded by Natwest and Crowdfunder!!)

We could make 12 market stalls at aprox £90 each and we'd be off...we would be able to start building the Made Local Markets stalls. As Back Her Business would double our fundraising, so we'd need to raise HALF of this amount, £540. For this, we would need 108 people to support us with £5.

STRETCH GOAL - £2700

The bigger picture is to have 30 stands to allow 30 beautiful, diverse makers products, showcase at a market! With £2700, we could create a full market experience of 30 market stalls - This would be life changing and would allow us to get to work on building ALL of the market stalls, so that as soon as it is safe to do so, we can officially launch made local markets!

THANK YOU!

Thank you for your support, I hope to see you at an Curated Makers event in the future. Hopefully a market event!

Speak soon,

Megan

This project successfully funded on 11th June 2020