The Indie A List

Hi! I’m Kristina. I’m here to share with you a bit about something close to my heart, The Indie A-List. I started my first handmade shop the summer of 2011. I loved the idea but I found myself reluctant to purchase from handmade businesses. I was worried about the higher prices, I was worried the quality might not be great for what I was paying, I had heard horror stories about things going wrong with others who purchased online.

Sound familiar to any of you?

I bit the bullet and finally made my first online handmade purchase, a vintage pleated pouch from Sand and Starfish and I loved it. I started making other purchases from handmade shops and really started falling in love with the handmade community – the products and the owners. I started a page on my blog called “Tried and True”. The page was just somewhere my readers could go to find handmade shops I purchased from and loved. Soon I found people were coming to me to be listed on the page, people interested in sending in items to be featured and reviewed.

In 2012 the Tried and True page had outgrown the page and I had fallen head over heels with the handmade world. I wanted to do something bigger, so I made a separate site and divided the shops into category types. That same year I launched our first gift guide for the Christmas season. Within the past couple of years the Indie A-List has only grown and this year we launched a brand new website.

The Indie A-List‘s mission is to become a reliable resource for consumers to come and find handmade & indie businesses they know they can trust. All of our members I have personally interacted with and received their product first hand. All of the members are a part of the list either through purchases I’ve made, or through the submission process. It’s my goal to find exceptional shops I’m willing to put my name behind because I personally know they are awesome.

On the shop side of things, my goal is to help the shop owners stand out in the sea of independent businesses. It’s easy to feel like you are being overseen when there are so many options of where to buy these days. I also have always made sure it’s affordable for the shops. Handmade shops run on tiny budgets.

Each and every shop is listed for FREE. I never want the consumers that visit our site to think someone is on the list because they paid to be there, that is never the case. Ever. The shops make the list because they earned it and I promote them because I genuinely believe in them.

Within the list we are thriving to build a community and support within our shop members and recently introduced the Plus Membership feature that allows our members to access our member forums, attend free classes throughout the year and additional promotional opportunities, as well as, fun events like our monthly member video chats.

If you are a consumer looking to shop our site is laid out to make sure that it’s easy to find the types of shops you are looking for including narrower categories such as: eco-friendly, by location, by a discount and more, making it easy to find what you are looking for. Our blog is filled with cool projects, printables, recipes, business tips, member interviews and more! We are constantly filling it with stuff that member and consumers alike can benefit from. If you follow us on twitter, you’ll find awesome deals and news from our members, and with instagram we are regularly sharing peeks into our member shops, special and we even through in the occasional giveaway!

If you are shop owner, with a great customer service, exceptional products and you are looking for support and community, along with some affordable promotion we are always looking for great shops to join our list. You can learn more at: theindiealist.com/join.