A lot has happened in my life over the past several years. Just too much to detail here. But one of the things that I got involved with over the pandemic and while caring for my grandmother, was working with a group to form a worker owned cooperative. Our goals had a lot to do with activism & mutual aid. But in order to do those things in our capitalistic society, you have to have a funding source. We worked on a consulting business which could have worked out well, but did not for a variety of reasons. And we also spent close to two years working to develop a website that would be a multivendor marketplace to help our group have a place to sell our goods as well as opening it up to other artists, authors & makers that were in our network. We had met a few people that were part of the Etsy Strike who also wanted to participate and gave us some good input about the crazy fees and shenanigans that Etsy has been engaging in. But just as we launched our site, there were things that came up like personality clashes and, honestly, I think a real fear of success. So the site was up for about two months and things were just not moving along. We needed a marketing plan. But no one wanted to take that on. The site was glitchy and we were doing our best to address the issues, but we had limited people (including myself) who had time to work on it. We needed customer service. But our group members just wouldn’t commit. I resigned and the website was dismantled immediately afterward. The cooperative decided to take a different route.
I decided to continue on the path. I found a better plugin that does not have the glitch problems we were having before. I used my own website domain and reconstructed a new multivendor marketplace site to provide a sellers marketplace for my community of friends who are all really talented people and make some pretty spectacular things. I have onboarded some of them already and they are in the process of setting up their shops. It may take time to get things rolling but I am really optimistic about the future. I invite anyone reading this to join us on this venture! Click here if you would like to apply to be a seller in this growing community!
I thank all of your for your support over the years and I look forward to connecting with you again in the very near future!
Love & Blessings, April
