Marketspot

Marketspot.ca is an e-commerce platform that sells handmade products from local artists, artisans, and craftsmen. Their focus is on celebrating local vendors and products and promoting sustainable shopping. Marketspot vets all their vendors to ensure they meet the criteria of their platform (100% handmade, local, Canadian) to ensure the integrity of their platform to their community and shoppers.

Marketspot started as a small local shop in Calgary and maintained a regular presence at local markets and fairs. Their popularity kept growing, attracting more vendors and shoppers, but they were running out of room at the shop and wanted to create an online platform that would allow local vendors from across Canada to sell their stories and products. To differentiate themselves from competing platforms such as Etsy, they wanted to create a vendor screening process to ensure all vendors are 100% local to ensure the integrity of their platform, vendors, and products. In addition, they wanted to introduce a badge system to help categorize vendors and products.

Platform - We built Marketspot an e-commerce platform using Shopify. This would allow them to easily manage the platform internally and avoid having to incorporate multiple plugins or custom coding to handle inventory, payment, and security. We worked with their team to ensure we covered all the technical and functional requirements from an administrator, vendor, and customer perspective. We worked with the initial Founding Member vendors to set up their store and create training videos for all future vendors. To address the categories, we introduced a badge system to categorize vendors and products to make it easy for shoppers to filter and shop by tags that matter most to them. These badges were hand-drawn by our in-house illustrator to fit the handmade look and feel of the brand. Strategy - This was the first time Marketspot was going to be looking for new vendors and shoppers outside of Calgary. Once the platform was close to completion we created a national strategy to attract more vendors and shoppers using several tactics including partnerships, influencers, social media, online ads, and local marketplaces in major cities across the country. In addition to a national approach, we also wanted to increase Marketspot’s local presence and introduce the new online platform. This was done using in-store advertising, window decals, cards, geo-targeted ads, and social media. Advertising - We ran multiple online advertising campaigns targeting vendors and shoppers locally and nationally on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. Social Media - Marketspot has a team member that manages their social media channels but wanted to help create teasers for the launch of the online platform and to create content that highlights and showcases vendors. We created Instagram Reels onsite in their store location to showcase all the exciting products that were going to be available online and deliverable across Canada. With the upcoming holiday season, we created gift guides for everyone in your life, and specialty seasonal products along with Marketspot favourites. To highlight vendors, we created a Meet The Maker series that introduced a vendor and asked them a few questions about themselves, their business, and their products.