Arts-and-crafts retail chain Michaels is hosting its marketplace sellers in stores to sell their goods. The initiative aims to drive awareness to its handmade marketplace MakerPlace.
Michaels is bringing its marketplace sellers into its stores to increase the visibility of its new handmade marketplace.
Michaels launched its marketplace, called MakerPlace, in fall 2023. The retail chain sells componentry for arts and crafts, and so it made sense to launch a platform where its customers could sell their finished products.
To boost awareness of the marketplace, Michaels is hosting sellers in stores to sell their wares in real life. About 250 sellers have done this so far with one seller in a store on a Saturday, said Heather Bennett, executive vice president of marketing and ecommerce.
“We’re trying to make this feel more like a community and more like going to your local craft fair and finding treasures that way,” she said.
Here’s how it works: Sellers volunteer that they would like to sell in their local Michaels store. The retailer has a conversation with them to ensure they are interested. Sellers secure their spot with $10 so they have “some skin in the game,” she said. Michaels sets up a table, table cloth and sign in the front of the store and for three hours on a Saturday, the marketplace merchant can sell their goods and keep all of the revenue from the sale.
Michaels promotes the seller will be in store with flyers and alerting local media. With 1,300 stores, Michaels is only coordinating one or two of these sellers each week.
Michaels hopes to grow the number of sellers who sell in store by 10% each month, Bennett said. The retailer is looking to grow this initiative slow, learn what’s working, tweak and keep building, Bennett said.
“We’ve been trying to keep a little bit more manageable because we’re still finding ways that we can make this a better experience,” Bennett said.
For example, Michales decided to adjust the time sellers are in the store from 11 a.m.-2 p.m., instead of 1 p.m.-4 p.m., in order to overlap more when the store has the highest foot traffic.
This initiative is about building recognition of the marketplace with the goal of having more sellers and buyers to go onto the platform, Bennett said.
Bennett would not reveal the number of sellers on the MakerPlace only that it is “growing nicely.” Michales also has a seller acquisition team that is targeting mid-level sellers to come onto the platform.
Although MakerPlace has been live for about a year, it’s still in the build phase Bennett said. It did not launch with every feature and it is still gathering feedback from sellers on how to make it better.
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