JUST A CARD Indie Week 23–27 November 2020; The colourful, independent alternative to Black Friday!

Did you know that today marks the beginning of JUST A CARD’s Indie Week? It’s a week to celebrate independent shops, artists, makers & small businesses and an antidote to the fast-purchase culture of Black Friday.

If you don’t know what the JUST A CARD CAMPAIGN is all about, then check out the website here: justacard.org

Everyone should get involved. If we all spread the word and shopped more thoughtfully, we could really make a big difference!

““If everyone who’d complimented our beautiful gallery had bought just a card we’d still be open.””

— JUST A CARD campaign founder Sarah Hamilton

I've always been passionate about supporting small, independent businesses, even before I was one myself. Variety is the spice of life and how very boring it would be if we all bought the same stuff from the same big companies.

It's more important than ever to keep our indie shops and businesses alive, if we want to see them survive. If you want to continue to have choice, then you need to make thoughtful purchasing choices now, before all the interesting shops go under and are gone for good.

Instead of copping out and buying all your Christmas presents from Jeff the multi billionaire's popular online megastore, make a bit of effort; seek out the local alternatives! Instead of buying something of dubious provenance and quality, when you buy from a small business, you're getting something that a whole lot of love and thought has gone into. And each purchase you make makes a huge difference to that seller.

When you buy from an independent business you are supporting creativity, diversity, local communities. You are shopping more thoughtfully, more sustainably and more ethically.

Being a maker and small business owner myself, I've been lucky enough to discover a whole host of amazing businesses and their products over the last few years, in part by exhibiting alongside them at tradeshows and the like . I honestly think if people knew that such great stuff was out there, they’d never bother with the high street chains or huge online marketplaces (you know the one I mean).

And they’re very often not more expensive either, often pricing themselves very competitively, even though the quality is almost certainly much higher than the mass produced alternatives. There is so much to choose from out there, but if you need a little pointing in the right direction, I’d like to share a few of my favourite places to shop…

Every week-day this week, I’m going to share links to some of my go to indie shops / makers that I buy from myself, focussing on a different category each day. I’m going to kick it off with CARDS:

CHARLOTTE FARMER

À L'AISE

JEFF JOSEPHINE DESIGNS

ALSO THE BISON

TAKAKO COPELAND

LIZZIE CHANCELLOR

JO CLARK DESIGN

SCOUT EDITIONS

SARAH CEMMICK LINO CUTS

Clicking on the images above will link you to the shops where you can buy from and support these small businesses. I’m in no way affiliated with or paid by any of them; I just enjoy sharing cool things with others and spreading the love.

This is just a tiny selection of the cool stuff made by awesome people (not huge corporations) that you can find out there.

If you have any other recommendations or suggestions, feel free to comment below. And of course do share this blog post! The more people we get on board with the JUST A CARD mentality the better!