The Bushfires stopped our stallholders

From late December, through early to mid-January 2020, we started seeing the impacts on stallholders from the bushfires. Production supply chains with raw products and transport suffered shutdowns, stallholders were unable to travel, the impact peaked with the devastating loss of houses, property, and the business livelihoods of stallholders located in badly affected regional fire zones. To support these stallholders, we immediately waived fees and offered free stalls to help the makers get back on their feet. We provided additional connections and support through other makers to help access equipment and supplies. Our aim was to minimize the trauma and loss suffered by these stallholders and help them in their greatest time of need. 

The Pandemic stopped our customers

As Canberran’s removed their p2 bushfire smoke masks, we started planning for our March 2020 market, our sense of calm was shattered when the global pandemic took hold and the first of the business lockdowns started. With 6 days’ notice our March market was cancelled in what we didn’t know would be the first cancellation of every in-person market across the next 2 years. Let us save you the story and go straight to the punchline of this seemingly unfunny joke. The June 2021 market was cancelled with a day and a half notice due to ACT Government health restrictions resulting from an outbreak in Sydney and our ‘shed’ at EPIC was converted to Canberra’s COVID testing centre. We dropped what we were doing and had to walk away from our setup (it’s still there today). But we had one last trick up our sleeve.

So, we took the market online

With the business setbacks of 19/20, no guaranteed relief from business lockdowns in sight and no consistent plan to see major events getting put back on the calendar in Canberra, we gathered our eggs and made a new basket to put them in. This basket would become our virtual markets and a partnership with Handmade Australia Online Marketplace..

Virtual Markets and Online Marketplace

We had built up a following of 80,000 followers in social media (40k FB + 39.3k IG) and more than 15,000 on email so we moved quickly to launch our first ‘virtual market’ online event to replace our March in-person event. Through photos, videos, posts, and emails, we encouraged people to ‘browse the market’ and visit retailers online by clicking the links on our stallholder directory, following the links in our posts and shopping with these stallholders via whatever means possible – email, phone, website enquiry and where possible direct online sales. We also partnered with Handmade Australia to provide our stallholders with greater reach through their ecommerce platform.

We didn’t let any crisis stop us from sharing our story

During the pandemic, we remained committed to growing our brand, innovating our product and discovered a resilience in our stallholder and customer community that we suspected was there but had never been pressure tested like this.

So that’s how we did it, against the odds.

We end this story with our mask on, our chin up, wine in hand, and thousands of customers and stallholders still creating, selling, and enjoying each other’s wares every day on our platform. Our goal was to remain sustainable through this period and we met and exceeded this goal. 

We thank our stallholders for adapting to new ways of business and our loyal customers who continued to support us in these challenging times and look forward to seeing you at our market in Canberra.