So we have been a little on the quite side for most of this year. We can now reveal why.

As most regular readers will know we have been trying to reduce our plastic. Part of this was increasing our shop local habits for the past 3-4 years now.

This has been relatively easy until this year. There is always a local market or summer fate to pick up items nearby. We also have some amazing shops in our town. where this fails other local towns around haven’t. This has always opened up a world of small independent businesses.

Then 2020 and March came along with COVID-19. The world stopped for 90% of people and everything went pear shape.

Duncan didn’t stop work throughout either lockdown. Buying local became next to impossible. Businesses we loved to use didn’t have websites and those that did were impossible to find. Google & Facebook searches just throw what they want you to see. Those who pay big bucks for advertisement. The Marketplaces available out there are flooded, just the sheer number of similarly named businesses caused a nightmare.

Finding new local Independents online is not an easy task either. We slowly found ourselves unable to source the items we normally use on a regular basis.
This brought on an idea, why isn’t there a marketplace online for the small local independent businesses?

We will fast forward through 6 months of planning designing and life. This weekend just gone, we opened our first Shop local Marketplace Wiltshire Gifts to everyone.
www.wiltshiregifts.co.uk

so please head to the link and have a look and help us help Wiltshire’s local Indies.