Grandma's Favourite Marmalade Recipe
A story about how this all started
Prep Time
A moment of disappointment that stuck with us
Cook Time
A year of thinking, talking, and building
Serves
Anyone who wants to find and support real artists
Ingredients
- 1 deeply upsetting dropshipped keychain
- A generous scoop of love for handmade things
- 4 tired friends with a chronic shopping habit
- 2 mentors cheering us on
- 56 long conversations about AI art and mass production
- A pinch of rage
- A heap of optimism
Instructions
- Start with a moment that sticks. Ours happened at a local event with an artist alley full of handmade / hand-designed goods. We found a table selling crochet keychains and bought one. Later that week, we realized it had been dropshipped. We were devastated!
- Add in a sense of doubt. We all do art as a hobby, some of us even crochet. We thought we could tell the difference. That moment made us pause. If we couldn’t spot it, how could anyone else?
- Mix in a lot of conversations. We started talking to friends and other sellers we knew. It turned out this wasn’t just a one‑off experience. Over and over we heard the same thing: people want to support real artists, but it’s getting harder to know who’s real.
- Fold in an idea we couldn’t let go of. What if it didn’t have to be this hard? What if there was a space that helped people find artists and makers they could trust, without second‑guessing?
- Knead it into shape. And that’s how Marmalade began. We're still adding to the recipe, but everything we do is shaped by that first experience and the artists we've met along the way.
