I was reading the news early this morning, following the Super Typhoon Haiyan as it hit the Philippines. And I remembered back to a similar morning when I was up early watching initial reports come in from Japan as their eastern coast was swallowed by a tsunami… and remembering further back the morning after Christmas in 2004 as a massive tsunami hit Indonesia, Thailand and other nearby countries.
I went to Thailand days after that Tsunami and it changed my life, I left there with the mission to help make the world a better place. Changing the world is a common mantra in startups, and I believe by helping people around the world earn a livelihood by using their creative skills, we’re doing just that. But we have an opportunity to do even more.
Marketplaces are communities. And by connecting people around the world, the commerce that we transact around can be more than just for profits – it can become investments in a future that is better than the world is today. It can provide a real living wage to creatives around the world and help them provide for the people they care about… and it can create opportunities for our community to connect and give back to those in need.
When hurricane Sandy hit the New York/New Jersey area last year, our marketplace was brand new, and yet shop owners donated a few thousands dollars of their earned income to help the strangers whom they’ve never met. It was a powerful statement, not just about the quality of people we have as part of our marketplace, but that as a for-profit company, we could still make a material difference in the world beyond the commercial service we provide.
And so with the support of our community, we created a campaign to raise money for the flooding relief in Colorado and created a Pay it Forward for Colorado campaign to showcase some of our sellers who agreed to donate up to 100% of their sales in October to the cause. I’m incredibly appreciative to say that our sellers donated $7,500 to All Hands Volunteers, who is on the ground facilitating some of the relief work… and that we at Creative Market will be donating all our share of these sales too, and bringing up the total donation to $10,000.
We also put some of our work on hold to take the Creative Market team to volunteer for a couple days in Colorado, so we could connect our hands to the work being done. Our team flew in from San Francisco, Austin, Portland, D.C. and even from England. While the work we did was meaningful for the communities All Hands is helping, the trip was hugely rewarding for the individuals in our company and our culture as a whole.
I want to personally thank everyone who is helping us build the world’s best marketplace for creative assets and especially to our sellers who have gone above and beyond to give back to others in need. With a community like you backing us up we will continue to strive boldly to build the best product possible and to make the biggest difference in world. Thank you so much.
And thank you again to the sellers who offered their earnings to our campaign:
Yellow Design Studio, Hold Fast Foundry, DesignWall, Sparkle Stock, Laura Worthington, PictoFoundry, BeRabbit, mattborchert, Juri Zaech, Ultimate Bundles, OnTheSpotStudio, Frisk Shop, digital bakery, Jack Fahnestock, Morgana Lamson, Jamie Peak, Anariel Design, DrewGliever, Little Pixel Shop, RetroSupply Co. / Dustin Lee, Gerren Lamson, Liam McKay, I’m Sprouticus, Ben Bate, Graphicon, Juan Carlos Pivaral, Ste Grainer, Hello AWSM & Stephanie Faye.
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Friends call me Bub(s)(ba). CreativeMarket.com CEO #1 Husband of Kaili & Father of Waialea, Maia & Sachi.
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