We Need Your Help: The Indie Oxford Market Place Crowd Funder!

Posted July 31, 2019

We need your help! This week we have launched a Crowd Funder to help us fund the next Indie Oxford Market Place in The Covered Market. The Market Place will provide much needed retail space for indie businesses in the heart of Oxford, as well as business support and promotion to help small businesses develop sustainably in a challenging retail environment.

We need your help with initial set up costs, and to help cover the cost of a shop manager to make sure we create a space that will benefit the local community and the businesses involved.

We, Rosie Jacobs and Anna Munday, started the project in 2015 with the aim of bringing businesses together to build a supportive and collaborative community of independents. We also wanted to show you the diversity and creativity behind the independents of Oxfordshire – there’s far more to discover than you think!

Independent Oxford is a project that encourages people to shop locally by supporting and promoting independent businesses in Oxford and the surrounding county.

This year, we are embarking on our second Indie Oxford Market Place in The Covered Market which will run from September to December 2019. This follows a smaller pilot in December last year which saw thousands of people value the ability to shop locally in the run up the festive season, and support the local economy to make Oxford a more diverse and interesting place to live.

This second Market Place will promote and support at least 20 small innovative indie businesses in Oxfordshire as well as showcasing the Indie Oxford network and its members. It will also host workshops and talks to up-skill business owners, and will be a space for the local indie community to use to promote their businesses through a varied events programme for you, the indie loving public!

Our Key Aims

To encourage people to shop locally and discover the businesses on their doorstep
Provide much needed retail space and marketing exposure for local businesses at affordable rates
Nurture businesses to secure longevity in an evolving retail climate
Utilise under-performing space in the city
Create a store that will enhance the historic Covered Market & City Centre
Draw in people from across the city & county to the centre
Be a hub for our community & enable collaboration
Support business owners to be role models for the next generation

Why we need your help!

To be able to get the Indie Oxford Market Place off the ground, we need to raise much needed set up funds that includes shop set up and support staff so we can truly make the most out of the pilot and get people seeing the value of shopping locally.

The pilot will support at least 20 different businesses across the four months. If it is successful, we will be able to look at taking on a long term premise which will increase this number and allow us, as Independent Oxford, to continue the work we have done over the last four and a half years supporting and promoting the indies of Oxfordshire.

One of the hardest things you can do is set up your own business, and we are striving to create a community for small businesses to offer support through the peaks and troughs of self employment. The Indie Oxford Market Place will be a real hub for this support alongside giving businesses a test bed to trial their products in The Covered Market.

‘The Oxford Indie Market Place was an excellent opportunity for us to extend our brand and service to a prime location in Oxford we would not otherwise be able to afford. It gave us the chance to trial product lines and for our products and services to sit amongst those of other exciting independent businesses in Oxford. We can’t wait to be a part of Indie Oxford Marketplace 2.0!’

– Robbie, Oxford Alterations

We really appreciate any support you can give us. Through supporting independents you’re supporting the local economy and the money you spend at an independent directly helps support that person’s livelihood, and makes our communities and neighbourhoods a better places to live.

If you would like to find out more & donate, check out our Indie Oxford Market Place Crowd Funder.

Thank you so much.

Love,

Rosie & Anna

xxx

crowd funder, Independent, indie, Oxford

Rosie Jacobs

I’m really passionate about Independent Oxford and supporting and promoting independent businesses in Oxfordshire. Indie businesses are the life blood of our towns, cities and communities, but they need support to survive and thrive. Creating a network that provides a space for indies to find peer support, knowledge and information is so important, and means businesses are far more likely to continue. Supporting indies means a stronger local economy and a closer, inclusive community for all.