The 1000 Markets "Minifesto"

This is the first part of a multi-part series where I am serializing the 1000 Markets "Minifesto," the 15 principles and guidelines that form the foundation of our business and our community here. In this installment, we cover principles 1 through 3.

We at 1000 Markets are a team of entrepreneurs with a simple goal: to create a thriving e-commerce platform for artisan-based businesses and the communities they enrich. Our models are the great “public markets” of the world, from the open air marketplaces of Fez and Marrakech, to the famous Pike Place Market in Seattle, to the more than 4,300 local farmers’ markets from California to New York. Our strategy eschews the massively-scaled and centralized marketplaces now so common on the Internet in favor of thousands of human-scaled collaborative marketplaces owned and operated by the artisan communities they support. We engage millions of small scale entrepreneurs in a market-creation process that brings the public market experience to the online world.

The Following are our Beliefs and Guideposts

1. A marketplace should feel “alive”.

Thriving markets will be more than just collections of products; they will be full of people and stories. They will have voices and personalities. They will feel dynamic and alive. A static market is a dead market. An alive market is a bit of organized chaos. Our tools will build up market activity, encouraging action and movement, bringing bustle to the forefront.

2. The best markets will be like public amenities.

They will offer social and cultural experiences that connect us to our collective histories, regions, cultures, ethnicities, and experiences. They will promote artisanal skills and craftsmanship as a cultural resource. They will become gathering places that foster community and connoisseurship. Over time, they will become repositories for the collective wisdom of their participants. The most exciting markets will become institutions in their own right, public amenities with “stickiness,” staying power and brand identity that transcends any one participant.

3. People matter.

People animate a space, make it come alive. For much of human history, markets were the center of social and civic life—they were the original “social networks.” Yet today’s mass market retail is largely impersonal. Whether you buy books on Amazon or underwear at Wal-Mart, “people” get reduced to “targets,” “segments” and “demographics.” Yet, we are inevitably drawn to places that are populated by real people in unrehearsed interactions – as demonstrated by destinations as diverse as Facebook, YouTube and the local farmers’ market.

Part II.

Images of Pike Place market taken by http://www.flickr.com/photos/papalars/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/felpaj/ -- licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.