Handmade Grand Valley Online Marketplace
Handmade in the Grand Valley of Western Colorado
Buy . Sell . Support
Contact us or sign up for updates to learn how your voice can help make the Handmade Grand Valley online marketplace a reality and to keep more of our creative e-commerce dollars in our Colorado communities.
We can do this.
Handmade in the Grand Valley of Western Colorado
About Handmade Grand Valley
The global online handicrafts market was $803 Billion in 2023 — and growing. Our local economies should be a bigger part of and benefiting from that growth. The major e-commerce platforms where artisans and crafters sell are getting 12-20% in commissions and fees. Instagram's high rate of hacking is well known. There needs to be a safe, simple and secure online space where local artisans and shoppers can engage.
Enter Handmade Grand Valley, the online marketplace where Western Colorado creatives and galleries have their own stores. Shoppers can browse and shop by seller, by product, by category.
After a year of development recruiting artisans and advertisers, investing thousands of dollars, securing an advertising and marketing agency, regular sessions with the Grand Junction Business Incubator, working with a women-own tech company in Texas that specializes in niche online marketplaces, we were scheduled for launch September 2023 to coincide with start of the holiday shopping season. And that's when we ran smack into Colorado House Bill 2022-1099, the new law blaming online marketplaces for an alleged rise in retail theft, which shut us down (the legislation, not the alleged rise in retail theft that turned out to be false, according to the Council on Criminal Justice). And we're still trying to find a path forward.
Support Local Artisans
Based in Grand Junction, Colorado, Handmade Grand Valley online marketplace was created in response to the growing number of artists and at-home crafters who find the big selling platforms to be cumbersome, expensive, complicated, risky and more hassle than their worth because of high fees and commissions from the major e-commerce platforms.
Developed by a former magazine publisher turned top-rated online seller on a major e-commerce platform, Handmade Grand Valley online marketplace connects the convenience of e-commerce with the creative community at the local level — keeping more of those dollars in our community, in our state.
And because the model and the technology is replicable, we can show other areas of the state how to do it too and then we network each region into a buy-Colorado Creative economic force.
Legislative challenges
Colorado House Bill 2022-1099 blaming online marketplaces for an alleged rise in retail theft added barriers and costs to the Handmade Grand Valley online marketplace after being told by the bill's prime sponsor that the law would not apply to the project. Stipulations in the law put sellers at risk, require personal tax information be reported to law enforcement (information not required of other businesses), and because it is a new law requiring new compliance language because there is no precedent or boilerplate for the online marketplace terms and agreements at a legal fees cost of more than a third of the projects entire first year startup and operations costs, HGV Marketplace founder Krystyn Hartman has been knocking on doors, testifying to the legislature, sending letters and emails trying to get some relief so that the marketplace can go forward.
"It is going to take voices with a lot more influence than mine to get them to pay attention," she says. "No one is stealing handmade potholders and reselling them online."