New online market for county’s artists

A new project is due to launch this week to help Wicklow’s crafters showcase their designs online.

Rachel Kane has set up Wicklow Marketplace, which offers online ‘shopfronts’ for artists, sculptors and other crafters living in the Garden County.

Rachel said she began to notice in her research work with small businesses and community organisations, that many small craft businesses did not have e-commerce websites.

‘I noticed that many people in the creative industries are not taking the next step and creating an e-commerce site. For them, that time is better spent working on their craft because if they don’t make anything, then they have nothing to sell. A good website takes time and maybe they did not have that time to invest.’

The focus on shopping local during lockdown also inspired the Baltinglass woman.

‘It’s hard to shop local when people could not come to the shop. I thought “what if we had the creative businesses in Wicklow all in one place”.’

The result is wicklowmarketplace.ie. Each individual craft business has its own ‘shopfront’ on the site. The aim is to recreate the feel of a market virtually.

‘It’s about bringing the community that already exists online. Hopefully, it might lead to opportunities for mentorship in the future.’

There has been a positive response from craft businesses in the county to the idea. Rachel is collaborating on the project with Robin Free, who has done much of the web development work.

Craft businesses pay a flat 5 per cent of the sales price on items sold to use wicklowmarketplace.ie. Rachel said it was important to offer ‘really low costs’ to prospective craft businesses that use the site.

‘ There’s already a community of artists in the county who do what they do and this is about bringing that online.’ Rachel added.