We love meeting and connecting with new makers! Here's a few ways you can be part of our community:

• Follow us on social media at @makersofmaryland
• Join our Makers community on Circle. It's free and we have a community chat where you can network and get to know other makers. Click here to fill out the form to join: Join Here
• Join our email list by clicking "Stay in Touch" in the bottom right corner of this page. You'll be notified of new vendor opportunities, meet ups, coaching opportunities and more!
  

The heart of the makers is our creative and supportive community. We'd love to see you in Circle and interacting on social 💞 Simply getting to know other makers in your area can be a powerful tool to collaborate and grow your business.

If we're currently accepting applications for our retail shops, you'll find the link to that application on this page: Vendor Info

Shops have a lot of moving parts to run efficiently. To keep things organized we have an application process we go through for each shop. If you're interested at all, please apply before emailing us with questions. We'll need to review your application to learn about your business in order to answer your questions to the best of our ability.

Applications for our annual events launch in January each year. If we add a new event throughout the year, our email list will be notified first. Join our email list to be notified of vendor news by clicking "Stay in Touch" in the bottom right corner of this page.

It takes between 7 and 14 days to hear back from us after applying. Please make sure you add danielle@makersofmaryland.com to your email contacts so our messages don't go to your spam folder.

First, please check your spam folder for an email from danielle@makersofmaryland.com or help@makersofmaryland.com

If you still don't see an email from us, please contact us at danielle@makersofmaryland.com with your name, your business name, and what you applied for so we can look into it for you. Please allow up to 3 business days to hear back from us.

This is a great question. Handmade can mean a lot of different things in our creative community. Here's a few examples of what would qualify you as handmade for our vendor markets and stores:

• You hand make your products such as knitting a beanie, pouring a candle, or sewing a dress.
• You add a handmade element to a product. For example, you upcycle clothing with tye dye, stamps, patches, etc.
• You're an artist who creates your own designs and use printers to put your designs on bookmarks, keychains, prints, etc.

We don't accept resellers, MLM, vintage, or mass manufactured products.

If you still have questions about whether your products qualify, feel free to send us an email at danielle@makersofmaryland.com

When processing vendor applications, here are a few things we look for:

• Products made by the maker/artist (no resellers)
• Photos of products (bonus points for a picture of your vendor booth set up)
• Some form of online presence like social media (IG, FB, etc.) or a website. This isn't required, but it makes it hard to get a clear overview of your business without at least one of these online platforms.
• A clear product category. It's okay if you sell home decor and candles for example. Some overlap into different categories is okay. Where it gets hard is when vendors sell across multiple categories and don't have a clear product niche. For example, if you sell soaps, stickers, jewelry, crochet plushies, and cups, then you're spanning across five separate product categories. It's hard for us to place you at our events when you sell across this many categories because we limit the number of vendors per category to ensure the selection isn't oversaturated. Best practice is to pick your product categories on the application that are your best sellers. Then you can always note in the application that if we have the space you'd also love to sell xyz (your other categories), but you're willing to participate without them if needed. This will tell me what categories you most want to sell so I can at least approve you. Then we can speak further if there are other products you'd like to bring.

This is a great question! At Makers of Maryland, our goal is to do what's best for our vendors. So the quick answer is, we do a little of both.

Now, here's the long answer: We know how important it is for vendors to know as soon as possible whether they were accepted into an event or not. You plan your other vendor events and lives around these dates. So, we do accept applications on a rolling basis as soon as they launch. This means that we do accept vendors on a first-come first-serve basis to an extent. Those who apply when we launch applications are more likely to get in before we sell out of their product category. That being said, we do research each vendor to make sure they're a good fit for our events. We look at the quality of products, branding, social media presence and/or websites, pictures of their booth set up, etc. Vendors who are able to provide these photos and who have great branding and quality products are more likely to get approved over someone who isn't able to provide photos of their work and booth. We try to accept a mix of established vendors with displays they've worked years to curate along with new vendors who are just starting out. It's important to us to continue supporting makers as they start their business. So we do reserve spaces for those who maybe it's their first market ever.

Don't let any of this intimidate you if you're just starting out! The answer is always no unless you try. So, send in the application and if we don't have space this year at least that gets you on our radar for next year 😊

Please email us at danielle@makersofmaryland.com with your information. I'd love to chat with you!

We love our cottage food vendors! You're welcome to vend at our markets and vendor events. Unfortunately, we've been notified by the health department that cottage food vendors aren't allowed to sell consignment in our retail shop because we aren't a "food retailer" like a grocery store. If you're able to rent space in a commercial kitchen then we'd be able to sell your products in the store as well. I know cottage food can get confusing so feel free to reach out to danielle@makersofmaryland.com with any questions.