About

Local online businesses are doing everything that they can to reach and serve their customers. Their online presence is spectacular, they take phone orders and offer delivery and pick-up. But running an online business can often be quite a balancing act. Juggling all the aspects of getting the word out that you're online and open for business can feel ridiculously hard.

How do we make it easier? Glad you asked....

At OaklandMerchants.com customers can shop accross multiple local online shops with one easy check-out and no fuss. When a customer checks out we let the merchant know by placing those orders with you, the shop owner. We put the order together and deliver it to the customer. We use public transportation, micro mobility and people power to do that which means that we are a company that not only has a heart for local commerce but also has one for our planet and its resources.

Let's say you're the owner of a local online retail shop. You opt in to be a part of the marketplace. Think of it like bringing artists, makers and other online retails to Market on your local Main Street. It's a few simple steps to join and costs nothing to sign up.

Our system takes the work you've already done in putting your inventory online and adds your store to the marketplace for your town. No tedious process or serious effort required.

Or at least the people who want to know: your community of customers. We employ local writers to run social media, do email campaigns, and write profiles of our member online merchants to invite shoppers through the virtual door.

At OaklandMerchants.com customers shop across multiple local online retail stores using one cart and one checkout. After checkout we place the orders with our member shops and do the work of putting the order together.

For the shop owner we function like a very loyal customer who places orders for pick up. You'll get to know our Fulfillment Specialists because they will drop by your place each time an order is placed.  For the customer we fulfill their order and it's delivered to their door in attractive, re-usable packaging all in the same time-frame as a typical Amazon Prime order.

We pay our members once per month and retain a modest fee to cover credit card fees, sales tax and delivery costs. After a great big high-five the process starts all over again.

Here's the small print (but in large font) There isn't one. Why not? Because OaklandMerchants.com has been founded as a Public Benefit Corporation. That means that it is a special type of corporation that states public benefits it serves in addition to creating shareholder value. The public benefits we work in service of are creation of economic opportunity for local online business owners and the use of our platform in service of reversing climate change. Shopping locally does both.

That’s why we won’t be carrying advertising, nor asking people to pay to be on the site or to promote their store above others. That’s why we take the fee after the sales: we only get paid if local business owners get paid.

And we’re just getting started. We know that this works, but we also know it’s only fixing one part of the problem. Online small business owners have traditionally not been served well by big technology. We're building a model that puts local merchants, and the communities they serve, at the forefront of everything we do.