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.”
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Tag: small business
Boots to Business Gives Entrepreneurial Veterans A Leg Up
The unemployment news among veterans isn’t all bad. But while jobless rates are improving, former soldiers still face a bigger struggle landing employment than non-veterans.
Case in point: a recent study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the unemployment rate to be 6.8 percent among younger veterans, compared to 5.7 percent for the nation as a whole. Fortunately, a lot of people are working to solve this problem.
The 2011 “Hire Our Heroes” act required government agencies to come up with classes to help military veterans transition to civilian careers. One program that grew out of this mandate is Boots to Business, a training program that guides veterans through the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. Many are already benefiting from these classes, such as the more than 60 veterans hired by the MGM Grand Detroit (which has a Boots to Business program with the American Red Cross).
Rozell Blanks Sr., vice president of human resources at MGM Grand Detroit told Matthew Gryczan of Crain’s Detroit Business that when a company hires a veteran, “What you get is an individual who has high integrity, a high sense of honor and who wants to do their very best…I can’t think of a more difficult job than one that requires you to put your life on the line, and it’s not for a whole lot of money. So you’re talking about highly skilled, highly technical, well-disciplined individuals who tend to excel quickly in an organization.”
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families want to extend the program’s reach even further by offering Boots to Business: Reboot. Through it, free, two-day seminars will be held at dozens of sites across the country during July and August for veterans interested in starting their own businesses. Recently, a Reboot was held in Washington, D.C. in a very special building: the White House.
If they choose, vets can supplement the two-day Reboot program with eight weeks of online classes. At the end of those lessons, soldiers should know how to come up with a good idea for a small business, write a business plan, identify people and organizations that can help them and be able to launch the business.
Ray Toenniessen, Managing Director of Development and External Relations of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University said in a press release, “We know veterans make the best entrepreneurs and we know veterans hire veterans, that’s why IVMF and the SBA are so committed to training and educating veterans about entrepreneurship and small business ownership.”
According to the United States Census Bureau, veterans owned 2.4 million businesses in the U.S. in 2007 — that’s 9 percent of all the companies in the country. And those vet-owned businesses employed 5.8 million people, generating $1.2 trillion in receipts. With the downsizing of the military, now sounds like a great time to keep the veteran-owned small business trend rolling.
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Why Public Markets Are So Important
Who doesn’t love a public market?
After all, they provide a great opportunity to buy local food, expanding your culinary tastes in the process. But despite our adoration for these markets, we may not realize the full impact they have on the people working the booth. Elijah Anderson, a Yale sociologist, coined Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market a “cosmopolitan canopy” because it is a place of equal opportunity for all genders and ethnicities. Philadelphia is not alone, though, as public markets across the country give everyone the chance to succeed.
Public markets are on the rise again, as noted by Project for Public Spaces (PPS), who found that the number of farmer’s markets increased from 2,863 in 2000 to 7,175 in 2011. The rise can be attributed partly to the help of organizations that assist in linking farmers with land — many of whom are minorities.
FARMroots is one such group. Since its formation in 2000, it has been connecting Latin American immigrants with land in New York State. Recently, they have expanded into the city, supporting urban farms, a growing industry. This is possible through partnerships with Black Urban Group and second-career farms, which are run mainly by women. In addition to minorities, women are also new titans in the sustainable agricultural business. So far this year, FARMroots has helped raise and market 20 new farm businesses.
Further, farmers are also doing business with SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) customers, resulting in increased small business development and food access.
These initiatives aren’t limited to just the Northeast though. PPS has recently been working with a Hmong population in Missouri. Originally from Minnesota, the transition was rough due to a different growing season and less interest in Asian foods. However, with the help of a grant from the Kellogg Foundation through PPS, these Hmong farmers have been given another chance, with a grant that allowed them to participate in training sessions — resulting in sales increases ranging from 200 to 800 percent.
Although these minority and women farmers may experience some discrimination, overall public markets give them the chance to expand their businesses and improve their lives. Therefore, next time you drop by a farmer’s market, realize that not only are you helping yourself, but you are benefiting the lives of those selling to you, too.
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Utah Named the Most Business-Friendly State in the Union
How do you find the friendliest places to do business? Turns out, it’s not rocket science.
All you need to do is go to the businesses themselves, which is exactly what consumer service website Thumbtack.com did. Their study, conducted over two months and ending in late January, went direct to the source and asked 1,200 local small-business owners about their business environment.
And now, the results are in.
Taking the crown as the business-friendliest state is Utah, followed by Idaho, Texas, and Virginia all with “A+” ratings. At the opposite end are Rhode Island, Illinois, and California, most likely due to the high costs of operating in those states.
To compile the rankings, Thumbtack partnered with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on a survey that focused on these main categories: Starting a business, ease of hiring, overall regulations, and training/networking.
The survey also attempted to establish a correlation between government strategies and ease of business. Overall, the highest correlation was found between licensing and permitting regulations, as well as compliance with tax regulations.
Topping the list of business friendly metro areas is Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Sacramento, California came in last.) This ranking was determined by areas that had at least 30 survey responses.
Although there are positives and negative results of studies such as this, having access more data to improve the business environment is never a bad thing.
To check out the results click here or to view the full report, click here.
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Here’s How Thousands of Low-Income Americans Became Entrepreneurs
For some struggling small business owners, success hinges on the ability to acquire a loan or capital to get off the ground.
For minorities, this can be even more a problem since they are more likely to be denied credit, according to the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy.
Fortunately for penny-pinching, aspiring entrepreneurs in Minneapolis, the nonprofit Neighborhood Development Center (NDC) offers training and tools they need to get their own businesses off the ground that ultimately, help revitalize their community.
Founded in 1993, the NDC offers entrepreneurship courses, small-business loans, and real-estate projects with a focus on turning vacant buildings into business incubators, according to the National Journal.
“There is just this huge untapped resource,” said Mihailo Temali, founder and chief executive officer of NDC.
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The NDC estimates that every new business it supports ultimately generates $100,000 annually for the local economy through rent, property taxes, and business expenses. The group also partners with community organizations, dispatching NDC-trained instructors to teach a 20-week course offered in five different languages. The course costs students between $100 and $600. The small business incubator has trained more than 4,400 people, 84 percent of which are non-white.
Alumni can apply for small business loans after completing the NDC class. The lending team examines the student’s finances and business plan and uses instructors for references. While not all students go on to continue their business plans, NDC’s default rate is a mere 5 percent — in part due to hardworking entrepreneurs but also positive support throughout the entire launch process.
For Haiyen Vang and her husband, Neeson, the NDC is the reason they can boast a chain of six discount clothing stores — The Clearance Rack — and a staff of 26 employees. Ten years ago, the couple received help at age of 22. Neeson worked at Wal-Mart while Haiyen managed a toddler with another baby on the way. With only their GEDs and bad credit, it was unlikely they could launch anything of their own.
But through NDC training, a loan, and a network for support and advice, a decade later the Vangs are planning to nationally franchise their once-small business. The Clearance Rack is one of around 500 NDC-assisted businesses in the Twin Cities area.
“NDC assisted us, but then at the same time, we helped ourselves,” Haiyen said, noting the NDC’s ripple effect of giving back to the community. “It’s just amazing how the cycle just repeats. And it gets bigger and better every time.”
Big Bets: How Teaching Entrepreneurship Can Keep Kids in School
The Bay Area is known as a thriving startup community. But Suzanne McKechnie Klahr was struck by the inequality she saw there while working as a pro-bono lawyer in East Palo Alto. She wanted to make it easier for those with disadvantaged backgrounds to both get a good education and to find support for their small businesses. So in 1999 she founded BUILD, a nonprofit which gives entrepreneurial support and funding to disconnected high-schoolers with small business ideas.
BUILD now serves more than 930 students in three cities across the country, providing small business classes and start-up funding to the kids most likely to drop out of high school. “We are looking for students who were truant and had low test scores in middle school,” McKechnie Klahr says. “We want to engage them as soon as they get into 9th grade because disengagement in 9th grade is highly predictive of dropping out of high school.” Such intervention has already been successful. According to the folks at BUILD, 99 percent of seniors in the program have graduated from high school and 95 percent have been accepted to college.
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Swooping In and Saving a Shuttered Factory is All in a Day’s Work for This Hardworking Mom
There are many moms who are superheroes, but Allison Faunce is one who actually comes with a cape.
As Yahoo! Finance reports, Faunce’s small business, Little Hero Capes (which sells pint-sized superhero costumes), remarkably revived the Fall River Apparel cut-and-sew factory in southeastern Massachusetts.
Like many other factories in this country, Fall River Apparel had followed the same devastating narrative of America’s manufacturing decline: Jobs shifted overseas for cheaper prices, and the 30-year business that once pulled in $3 million in revenue and employed hundreds at its peak, gradually — and painfully — went bust.
“I went in one day and there weren’t anymore orders to come — and we were forced to close,” owner Jimmy Petrosso told the site. “The day we closed and I had to tell those 100 people — I was in the corner crying.”
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But in a move that truly saved the day (not to mention, an entire company) the Somerset mom decided to approach the local sewers at Fall River to help produce costumes for her growing company that was expanding faster than she could keep up with.
Now, in a case of a wonderfully symbiotic partnership, both Faunce and the factory are profiting. Yahoo! reports that Fall River has made more than 5,000 capes, which retail for $45 each. The company has also since teamed up with Wrapeaze, another thriving company that makes hooded superhero capes for kids.
“What Allison has taught me is that there are energetic younger people out there that believe in what they’re doing and believe that making it in America matters,” Petrosso said. “That gives me hope, because it was kind of tough when we lost it all…[Even if] she puts two people to work…it’s still putting people to work. So I would hope that there are more Allison’s, and they don’t give up…”
With help from super-moms like Allison Faunce, perhaps American manufacturing can make a comeback after all.
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