The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
To market, to market…
The buzz of haggling is off the cards for now, but creative digital start-ups are filling that gap nicely, says Chris Schalkx
Hawkers flogging their wares in incomprehensible languages. Nose-tingling wafts of chili powder and fish paste. Dazzling tribal textiles. The sense-shaking buzz of the world’s most colourful markets might still be the stuff of holiday daydreams, but a slew of recently launched startups now offer us the next best thing.
Having spent decades combing through markets from Macau to Malaysia in search of little-known noodle stalls and ancient curry recipes for Lonely Planet guidebooks and international travel publications, Bangkokbased photographers Austin Bush and Christopher Wise know what makes some market wares stand out.
“These days there’s not much difference between the stuff sold at touristcentric night markets in, say, Thailand and Vietnam,” says Bush. “But having travelled the region for so long, we have a strong idea of the clothes, cooking tools and ingredients that make each country or region unique.”
The duo now channel their market savvy into OMG (short for Outstanding Market Goods; outstandingmarket goods.com), an online shop to share products that, in their words, “could really only be made in the places where they’re made.” These could include laap knives from northern Thailand, bags of five-spice powder from a century-old Chinese apothecary in Penang, or hand-woven cloth from northern Laos.
The collection is ever-changing and adjusts to the duo’s travel schedule, often based on pre-orders. Offerings include farmer shirts from northern Thailand and aprons created in collaboration with one of the last traditional indigo dyers in Thailand’s Phrae province. Batik and tie-dyed napkins from Yala, a province in Thailand’s far south, are next on the agenda.
“A lot of these producers have only a vague idea that what they are doing is amazing,” Wise says. “Their products barely make it out of the town or province. So not only are they unique and have a sense of place, they’re tied to the community’s economy.”
Stockholm-based travel writer Lola Akinmade Åkerström set out on a similar mission. With her soon-tolaunch start-up, Local Purse (localpurse.com), she aims to connect online
shoppers with travel operators and guides to shop for artisanal products from craft studios, ateliers and markets around the globe through a live video connection. “Seeing what the pandemic has done to the industry tore at my heart, and I needed to find a way to try to support cultural aspects of the industry that rely heavily on tourism dollars,” Akinmade Åkerström says. For their first online shopping experiences, Local Purse teamed up with Intrepid
Travel to offer a guided tour of a Moroccan spice shop in the Marrakech medina (this Tuesday), and a virtual visit to a traditional Berber rug store (this Wednesday).
And now that even Amazon is going after a slice of the virtual-shopping pie, with video tours of Tokyo’s vintage paradise Shimokitazawa and artisan workshops in Peru (amazon.com/ explore), we can put the whole world on our Christmas shopping list.