A New Online Marketplace Empowers Makers

Many fibre and textile arts enthusiasts turn their passion for their craft into a business, and in today’s digital, globalized world, this often means selling online. For small entrepreneurs, however, the choice between building an e-commerce site that they’d fully control and opening a shop on an established online marketplace is not necessarily an easy one: Both options have major pros and cons. But what if the best of both worlds existed; what if craft solopreneurs could own the marketplace?

This is no longer a rhetorical question. Artisans Cooperative is a new online marketplace exclusively dedicted to handmade goods (including digital items such as craft patterns) that is owned and run by its members.

The idea for it was conceived in the aftermath of the Etsy strike of April, 2022, when a group of crafters who had participated in the strike concluded that artisans needed a better sales venue—one where their work would genuinely be valued, and where customers could find their creations without having to sift through a sea of mass-produced items. They figured that creating a business that was collectively owned by those invested in the handmade ethos was the best way to bring this vision to life and ensure it would not be diluted a few years down the line, as has happened with other marketplaces. This idea developed into an inclusive multi-stakeholder cooperative (with Artisan, Supporter, and Staff member classes) governed by three fundamental, intertwined policies that were elaborated by the community and designed to empower and benefit everyone involved with the co-op.

Although incorporated in the United States, Artisans Cooperative is international in scope, and Canadian makers and buyers looking for authentically handmade items have already started flocking to the co-op. Among them is weaver and hand dyer Gwen Penner, from Penner Fibre Studio in Ontario. She was quick to join the cooperative as an Artisan member because, as she says: “I like being a part of what I am involved with. I like the idea of a co-op where everyone chips in, in some way, to make something work, and then everyone benefits.”

If Ontario woodworker Joe Federer joined the marketplace in the hope of expanding his audience, it was also because he’s a long-time supporter of the cooperative movement. He’s grateful to the artisans who took the lead on such an enormous project, adding: “It’s highly unlikely that such an enterprise would be created strictly in Canada for an international audience.” In return, he was happy to contribute his programming skills to the co-op’s Tech team, helping it make the transition from a purely informational website to a functional marketplace with active artisan shops.

Artisans Cooperative’s leaders know that marketing is crucial to get a new business off the ground. Given that members have voted to bootstrap the co-op’s funding, as opposed to seeking outside investors, in order to remain fully independent, the marketing plan counts on people power to make up for a limited budget. This can prove to be a strength, as grassroots outreach initiatives sprout up wherever members and supporters choose to spread the word. This flyer is an example of marketing material, created and shared by a co-op member, that can be posted on billboards anywhere to help raise awareness of the cooperative.

Flyer design by Valerie Schafer Franklin of Walnut Studiolo, featuring Brook the chicken, the co-op’s mascot, and her friends (artwork by Ryn Lower of Tired Fox Art)

Accessibility is a core value of Artisans Cooperative, and it shows in the many options offered to make buy-in affordable to as many people as possible. Inclusivity is another one, and extends to non-members: Everyone can buy on the marketplace, and that’s soon going to be true of selling there too. Non-members will be able to open shops once the current beta testing phase is over and the processes are in place to smoothly welcome more sellers. This will make it easy for artisans to diversify their sales channels even if they don’t wish to become co-op members—although they may find out it’s worth doing given the advantages members enjoy, such as lower sales commissions, marketing support, and voting rights.

While the latter may seem inconsequential to some, the control it affords over decisions that affect one’s livelihood is not negligible. For example, as Penner notes: “Fees in other artisan selling sites keep going up,” but knowing that members will have a say if ever the cooperative needs to reconsider its fee schedule is both reassuring and empowering for artisans. It is also attractive to ethically minded shoppers like Supporter member Shannon B. in Nova Scotia, whose hope when she joined the co-op was “to have an easier time buying meaningful items for people in my life, while knowing that the artisans are receiving a fair amount of money for their efforts.”

As someone who buys “a fair bit of handmade stuff”, Supporter member Gwen H. in British Columbia echoes this sentiment, adding: “I’d like to find Canadian artisans to support and be more confident in who I’m buying from,” citing unaddressed issues of appropriation from Indigenous creators on other marketplaces. She became a member because she “wanted to be able to see how this thing developed,” and the leadership she saw from the cooperative’s core organizers gave her the confidence she was looking for: “I’ve been so impressed by their consistently collaborative, ethical approach.”

The cooperative’s marketing team also implements a social media strategy to bring attention to the co‑op and its members. This strategy includes a campaign called Humans of the Co-op, inspired by Humans of New York, which is run on Instagram. On November 2, 2023, that campaign featured Ontario embroidery artist Janice Hearn from The Storytellers Art.

Credit: Screenshot of @coopartisans on Instagram

A challenge for Canadian buyers at the moment is that the marketplace doesn’t support searching items or artisans by country of origin, or even sorting for those who ship to Canada. The information is available on the product pages, however, so it’s a shortcoming that most probably can be addressed as the cooperative refines its platform’s search capabilities.

Seeing an alternative such as Artisans Cooperative appear in an online ecosystem that seems largely dominated by unethical players and capitalistic considerations is refreshing and exciting. Like Shannon B. and Gwen H., I hope that Canadian craft businesses will grab this opportunity to take their power back and own the virtual land on which they set up shop, so that we can buy from local artisans on a marketplace that shares our values.

Disclosure: Josiane is a Supporter member of Artisans Cooperative, and leads the French translation efforts in order to help make the co-op accessible to more Canadian makers and customers.

Featured image credit: Artisans Cooperative (artwork by Ryn Lower of Tired Fox Art)