Hi!

Welcome to the newly
minted Idaho Made Blog.   Going forward I plan to share local events,
information about our wonderful artists and other interesting topics that pop
up.  Fair warning, I’m not a trained writer. I’m one of the lucky artists
who get to call Idaho Made home.  These posts will be very casual, like a
conversation with a good friend.   I want to start my first post with what
I feel is the most important topic of Idaho Made…..who we are and what makes
us, us. Let me introduce you.

A long time ago, in a
galaxy far, far away

Becoming Idaho Made
If you’ve spent any amount time in downtown Boise, you may have
noticed our quaint little local shop, stationed just on edge of downtown
Boise, in the Old Boise building. Appropriately named Idaho Made,
every item in the shop is handmade by local Idaho artists. It all started
in 2010 when a group of local artist who sold their work on Etsy,
decided they wanted a full time physical location to sell their
handmade work. This group of artist band together to run an Artist
Collective called Idaho Indie Works from 2010 to 2015. In 2015 an
opportunity occurred that allowed current owners, Molly, Steven and
Sarah to take ownership of the store. After restructuring and
rebranding to what is now Idaho Made, the owners were able to use
what they learned from their involvement in Idaho Indie Works. They
determined what worked well, and what could use some improvement
from the collective structure. Molly, Steven and Sarah share a deep
desire to empower local artists.
All three owners, being artists themselves, wanted to continue to have
a year round space that would allow local artists to create and sell their
handmade items without the risks or time commitment associated with
traditional methods of selling handmade item/art. Prior to the
transition to Idaho Made, the main options for selling handmade items
consisted of:
1) Owning operating your own retail store. Let’s be honest, most
artists want to create beautiful art to share with the world, not
run a retail store. Not to mention the tremendous upfront cost of
associated with running a store.
2) Committing most weekends to running a booth at a market/craft
fair. HUGE time commitment.
3) Hoping you made it big on Etsy or 4) Finding a retail store that would sell your items for you.
Realizing that these traditional methods left a lot of amazing local art
from being shared with the community, they decided to do something
unique. They wanted a space for ALL types of local artists.

Keep checking back for artist insights, profiles, stories and so much more.