Help Sparrow And Our Local Artists Keep Flying!

Sparrow Collective, a local business welcoming our 15th year of business is in need of community support. Since opening our doors in 2009, we have worked to support other local businesses, artists, and the community by providing a space to sell their handmade wears and art, find and communicate with other artists and makers, and offer workshops and events to educate and learn. Since our beginning we have worked on a consignment basis with many local artists, both regionally and nationally to get our artists' work into your hands. Over the years as we have been able to slowly shift into upfront wholesale purchases, which supports both us and our artists in a multitude of ways.

When the pandemic shut downs hit, like everyone else, we were left with uncertainty of survival. We worked tirelessly shifting our shop online, taking orders to deliver and ship, and find ways to support our staff and members. We were ecstatic to come out the other side with re-opening and slowly returning to normal, and clearly so were our supporters! Since then, all of us have been left with a very different world and finding ways to pivot as been crucial.

The amount of support we've received from our community since we re-opened has been incredible, but the addition of the economic downturn has left us with unreliable sales and traffic. Most of our annual special events such as our Anniversary destash party, Gallery nights, and Shop Small Saturday which, were not only fun but provided special and reliable foot traffic and sales, have not returned to their pre-pandemic atmosphere.

Over the last year we have dealt with a decline in both sales and foot traffic. Even our social media accounts have become underwhelming despite efforts of new tactics and teamwork. As time has gone on it has seemingly become more and more difficult. Our entire staff has brainstormed and been working together on ideas to get us heading back to our normal selves, but it has simply not been enough.

Surviving covid left us with fresh debts which has created greater expenses while sales slowly sink to levels we hadn't experienced in years. It's been difficult to keep up stocking and payments with the local artists who depend on us as well as properly stock all the goods that make Sparrow what it is!

We are launching this crowdfunding project to catch up debts owed to our local artists and well as completely shift toup front wholesale model, eliminating the added stress and work of the consignment model.

Once we have paid off our debts and shifted fully into an up-front model for supporting artists, we will be able to properly stock out shop again both with local artists and the small businesses we love so much! This financial support will give us the leg up we need to properly pivot our business and continue offering events, workshops, education, and some new in-house designs and production options.

If you love supporting local artists and businesses, we hope you'll consider making a donation, so that we can continue doing what we do best: supporting our community artists and providing opportunities for them to succeed in this new post-pandemic world.

If we can make this happen we have so many new ideas to bring a fresh environment to engage with our supporters, customers, and neighborhood.