The New Website That Encourages You to Buy Local

When most of us think of online shopping, Amazon, Ebay and other big name shopping sites immediately come to mind.  With a wide audience and cheap prices, these websites are popular and sell just about everything — except for local, handmade and artisan products. For those items, you probably tend to head to local boutiques or farmers’ markets.
But now, thanks to the new site MadeClose, you can buy these types of items from the comfort of your own home.
Launched six months ago, this Brooklyn-based e-commerce site specializes in eco-conscious products. What makes the company stand out though is how it organizes its site. Focusing on location, all of its products are arranged according to where they’re manufactured. Customers can search for their desired product on a browseable map on the site.
Overall, the company’s goal is to connect small-scale American manufacturers with consumers all over the country, allowing the companies to grow and expand.
Vendors don’t have to pay to join MadeClose, but the site does receive a commission on all sales.
At the heart of the company’s values is transparency. All vendors are required to display what percentage of a product’s materials are made in the U.S., how many employees they have and the product’s key ingredients and materials. In addition, the merchants have the option to include information on where the materials they use are sourced and their values.
Through this policy, customers will know exactly what they’re buying and where it comes from — making them a more active participant in the manufacturing process.
Right now, MadeClose has 600 merchants on its site. And while most are concentrated in Brooklyn, there are sellers from Los Angeles to North Carolina and include a reclaimed wood skateboard manufacturer, a tomato and cheddar biscotti baker, a Massachusetts-based booze-infused jam maker and a leather goods manufacturer.
And even though it’s not that environmentally friendly to ship a product cross-country, that isn’t a deterrent for the site. Instead, it focuses on how these local businesses are usually more community-based since they use local materials and reinvest in the community.
One such company is Ampersand in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ninety-five percent of the materials used by this furniture and home goods product design company comes from the Cincinnati area. And since joining MadeClose about a month ago, the company has expanded beyond its borders with all of its sales being to places outside of its home state.
But with any new site, there’s always critics, which claim that local products are expensive, elitist and only for those with “precious tastes.”
However, according to co-founder and CEO Peter Smith, those stereotypes are exactly what MadeClose is trying to dispel.
“Part of the reason that we started the site was to kind of pull back the veil on a lot of noise out there,” Smith told Next City. “What about the fact that if you buy from a local shop, they circulate a lot more money in their own community than a big business chain? I can understand how someone might think that the price points of artisanal goods are exclusionary, but a lot of time, they are better made and longer-lasting.”
DON’T MISS: This Company’s Success Challenges the Ethos of Cutthroat Business

Is the Motor City the Next Culinary Mecca?

As you’ve probably seen on popular cooking shows such as Kitchen Nightmares or Top Chef, running a restaurant kitchen is a tough job.
But for some food entrepreneurs, the real difficulty isn’t with rude wait staff or a missing ingredient. Rather, it’s simply finding the space to operate. That’s why a local food network group, FoodLab Detroit, is stepping in to act as that much-needed intermediary and acting as a matchmaker for businesses and kitchen space with its Detroit Kitchen Connect (DKC), which opened its doors last August.
Currently, DKC has working relationships with 10 different businesses and is operating two kitchens in the Motor City. The first —  called the Matrix Human Services — is located at the east side community center, while the second operates out of the St. Peter & Paul Orthodox Church in southwest Detroit. Both kitchens have between 1,200 and 1,600 square feet of cold and dry storage space as well as high-quality equipment including triple-stack conventional ovens, multiple burner stoves, preparation tables and a wide assortment of pots, pans and utensils.
So who uses these decked-out kitchens? Good Cakes and Bakes uses the space for prep work and baking, then moves their goods to their storefront to sell them. Working side-by-side with the bakers is the Michigan Pepper Company, producing its hot pepper sauce in the space.
Due to the wealth discrepancy of the area, the DKC charges different rates for their clients. For those businesses with financial difficulties, the fee is only $15 per hour. FoodLab members and vendors that sell their products at the local community markets, the charge is $18 per hour, where as businesses outside of Detroit pay the most at $30 an hour. The money saved has allowed the businesses to hire additional workers or invest in equipment, like delivery vans.
These businesses aren’t just paying for kitchen use, though. The DKC also provides a long list of additional services, including access to training workshops, peer mentoring, field trips teaching recycling and composting practices and a networking service through Keep Detroit Growing.
In less than a year, Devita Davison, the director of DKC, has seen how the group is benefiting the community: “We’re trying to create what we call an inclusive, equitable, and just local sustainable food economy,” she told Seedstock. “Detroit Kitchen Connect is really on the forefront of . . . using food as conduit to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in Detroit neighborhoods.”
MORE: For The People: This New Service Lets You Hire A Lobbyist

When a Town Struggles, Can Economic Gardening Be the Solution?

Turns out, Colorado is cultivating more than aspen trees and kick ass snowboarders.
For the past 25 years, the town of Littleton, Colorado has been using the concept of economic gardening to grow its businesses and economy with amazing results.
The idea came about in 1987 when missile-manufacturing company Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) pulled their business out of the Denver suburb, leaving 7,800 people without jobs and one million square feet of abandoned industrial and office space.
So Littleton’s business director, Chris Gibbons, decided to work with a Denver think tank, the Center for the New West, to implement this experimental theory developed by MIT economist David Burch.
Instead of being dependent upon just one major company, economic gardening involves identifying State-2 businesses — those that employ 10 to 100 people and have an annual revenue of $1 million or more — and giving them additional resources to expand.
Implemented in the late 1980s, 25 years of economic gardening turned a crippled Littleton into a booming town. The population increased by 25 percent, the number of available jobs tripled, and the city’s sale tax revenue increased from $6 million to $21 million.
Inspired by these results, Gibbons left Littleton to help start the National Center for Economic Gardening, which is sponsored by the Michigan-based Edward Lowe Foundation. Its mission: to spread the word and the tools to implement economic gardening in other cities and states. So far, it has established programs in multiple locals, including Kansas, Florida and Michigan, among others.
The newest state to join these economic gardeners is Maryland. Advance Maryland, as the program is called, began in 2013. So far, five businesses have been accepted at a cost to the state of $5,000 each.
Littleton’s success with economic gardening demonstrates that while unique, this business strategy is a viable and sustainable option. Perhaps, it is time for other cities and states to roll up their sleeves, put on their gardening gloves and grow their economy.
MORE: These Towns Show What Even Temporary Urban Renewal Can Bring