The Next Phase Of Retail: Values Driven Marketplaces

The rise of the conscious consumer over the past few years has paved the way for various multi-brand marketplaces to pop up everywhere. 90% of millennials say they want to switch to shopping for brands associated with causes, but the experience of actually seeking out those brands can be labor intensive and time consuming. That’s why marketplaces that focus on social impact, giving back, supporting small businesses and supporting underrepresented communities are thriving. From Social Goods and The Outrage which are built with activism at their core, to community focused marketplaces like We Are Women Owned, We Buy Black and Geenie shining a light on women and BIPOC-owned businesses. More than ever, consumers are shopping with process, story and mission top of mind. 

Lisa & Kate Sokolov are sisters who merged their collective experience in politics, fashion and social impact to build a socially conscious marketplace aptly named Social Goods. “As activists and shoppers ourselves, we wanted to create a place that offered bold, hopeful, and statement-making products that all give back to non profits and inspire sustained action even after the initial purchase,” says Kate. “We were seeing a lot of great issue-driven product campaigns, mostly small capsule collections tied to a key moment in the year. But when the campaign ended, the product and the spotlight on the issues seemed to disappear.  We wanted to make a platform that no matter the day, month, or year someone could come and shop statement-making products supporting the causes that matter most to them. We saw merchandise as a way to get people talking about those issues.” 

Similarly, Fox Holt was born over two cups of coffee and an ethical dilemma. Dale Volpe and Katy Rowley were working in fashion at the time and searching for ways to be more mindful consumers themselves. But they couldn’t find one destination to offer ethically produced luxury items. So they created a platform, “for designers and artisans to come together in one place under a shared mission: Sustain. Educate. Evolve. We want to inspire consumers to change their shopping mindset; to invest in quality pieces and to look towards craftsmanship instead of mass production.” 

Jaclyn Grauman created The Verticale to ease the burden on consumers so they would no longer have to navigate the many new digital retailers popping up everywhere. “I loved seeing innovative brands break down barriers that existed within the retail industry in a way that put ethos and storytelling at the forefront. I wanted to support them with my wallet, but I couldn’t keep up. The Verticale allows the consumer to shop their values in one convenient place.” 

Grauman wants consumers to be able to search for products based on those personal values. That’s why she implemented Verticale Value Standards. So instead of searching for t-shirts or accessories, consumers can now search by value — from eco-friendly categories like Reducing Waste and Ethical Production to those that impact society, such as Diverse Founders, Women’s Empowerment, Inclusivity and Individuality. “We believe the customer wants to shop more holistically across brands that mean something to them, with the ability to filter by value.”

The Fox Holt platform has a similar structure. All items on the site must adhere to at least two of the strict code of ethics and standards, such as made in the U.S, artisan, organic, fair trade and more.

There are also marketplaces that focus on supporting specific communities for those who want to support historically marginalized groups like women-owned businesses and Black-owned businesses. Beauty marketplace Geenie’s description reads, “the beauty community bringing BIPOC, queer and womxn-owned indie brands to the front.” 

Lisa Nicole Rosado founded We Are Women Owned because she was seeking “a welcoming, supportive community for emerging business owners. We Are Women Owned (WAWO) felt like a sisterhood where women could celebrate being female entrepreneurs and put it at the forefront of their business. Since 2017 we continue to grow our community, hosting a series of in-person and virtual pop-up shops and events for female-identifying small business owners.”

And of course, there are marketplaces that cater towards expecting and new mothers. Carli Evilsizer, founder of Partum, was inspired because of her own struggles through pregnancy and postpartum. “All of the retail stores and large online maternity brands just didn’t have the types of products with the values I was looking for. I knew there had to be emerging companies out there with better quality products and values, I just needed to build an easier way to discover and support them.”

Not everyone appreciates the consumer demand for these marketplaces, as these founders can attest. There were struggles to convince investors, to raise awareness of the consumer need, to coordinate all the different vendors participating in each marketplace, and then of course, when the pandemic hit, to balance all of these obstacles with children suddenly out of school, childcare setbacks, and supply chain delays. 

“Investors weren’t exactly banging down my door,” says Rebecca Lee Funk of The Outrage, a hub for activism that makes it easy for people to engage with the causes they care about. “They were hesitant to invest in something unapologetically progressive with significant monetary and in-kind donations core to the model. By necessity, we’ve bootstrapped everything off of my initial investment of about $500.”

Grauman shares her struggle to convince investors of The Verticale’s value, “In September we were fundraising from top VCs and it felt like we were fighting an uphill battle to sell our vision. Instead, we decided to pause that process and begin building a bootstrapped version of our marketplace instead. Within three weeks we had signed on 50 brand partners — no flashy VC names required. With every signed contract that came through, we knew that we were going to succeed in executing our vision.”

Then, there were the production issues. Kate and Lisa Sokolov of Social Goods shared an anecdote about the combination of great luck and terrible timing, “Navigating such uncertainty so soon after launching definitely made for an interesting year. We actually had one of our best days about three days before all of New York shutdown leaving us with lots (and lots!) of orders we couldn’t fulfill until our production vendor resumed operations in May. We were lucky that so many of our customers were kind and patient during the wait, but the situation definitely spotlighted the importance of honest and transparent customer service.” 

Evilser of Partum noted that creating a space with multiple brands is no small feat. “Building a multi-vendor marketplace has definitely been challenging. There were a lot of roadblocks when it came to figuring out how we were going to build our platform with all of the functions we wanted to provide for our vendors and create a user-friendly dashboard.” 

And then came the childcare issues. Evilser shared, “Another roadblock to launching this company was a lack of childcare. I had been working on this idea before the pandemic started and the majority of the work I needed to do to get this off the ground took place during those tough early months of lockdown. It was really challenging to navigate the early stages of launching a company while my husband and I were both working from home with a busy toddler and running on not much sleep.” 

The Fox Holt founders reflected on their own childcare issues last March when “our children were sent home and the country shut down. Like so many other parents, we were left to manage full time jobs with our kids (and significant others) being home. We found and still find ourselves working into the wee hours after putting everyone to bed and during nap times, but also embracing the fun moments resulting from this forced time together. What keeps us going is the basis of what Fox Holt represents: To be part of an ever-growing community of humans working together towards a better future.” 

Staying focused on their mission is what keeps most of these founders going. The Sokolovs say of the early days of Social Goods, “Since we were new we wanted to say ‘yes’ to everything. But that meant we were often chasing down a million different projects at once. We realized very quickly it wasn’t sustainable and we needed to focus. It’s a constant struggle to balance big, creative thinking and focused growth.”

But the consumer response has been overwhelming, and is what continues to drive forward that mission. “Every time a customer shares their purchase on Instagram and talks about the non profit it benefits makes us want to keep working, keep growing, and keep raising awareness for so many of these incredible organizations. We loved seeing so many of our customers’ voting in the ‘When All Women Vote’ t-shirts we made in collaboration with When We All Vote and United State of Women.”

The Outrage’s Rebecca Lee Funk feels the same way. “Our mission is simple,” she says. “To make it easy, tangible and accessible for anyone to become more civically engaged. And we do this by leveraging the power of both fashion and community, with a strategy grounded in behavioral economics and data analytics. We’re building the future of civic engagement.”

For Rosado, it’s the community she is building. “Businesses who are part of our soul-centered community become friends and end up partnering with one another. It’s not just about selling a product, it’s about fostering a community and creating a support system that will help you for years and years to come. WAWO is also proud to partner with IFundWomen to donate 10% of the profits to IFundWomen’s Pay It Forward Grant, a monthly grant where IFundWomen reinvents 20% of their standard crowdfunding feed revenue into live campaigns on the site.”

Rosado’s personal motto is a quote by Simon Sinek, “People don’t buy what you do, but why you do it.” She stands firm in her ideal that, “A business is so much more than the product itself. Founders are the face of their business and it’s important for them to showcase their story and share why they do what they do.”