We Built A Marketplace, Not A Flash Website

In summer 2014 I flew to Atlanta. I rented a car and drove northeast to Athens, a college town famous to me as home to two of my favorite bands, REM and the B-52s. I did not come for music however.

There I met Troy and Stephano, designers of the brand Necklush, who had recently moved to Athens from NYC for more space and a different way of life. Like many small business owners, these designers too had experienced the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Athens seemed a comfortable place to grow their business, not as chaotic or expensive as NYC, yet with a thriving arts culture.

We got to work silkscreening and assembling and laughing. After a day spent in their stunning work loft (you sure can find amazing spaces in the once-thriving south!) we walked to dinner and talked. I was reeling from leaving the company I’d founded, and frankly, I was a bit lost. I was hoping to find my calling in conversations with the people I cared about most: independent designers.

The Necklush guys had one simple request, and I am paraphrasing here:

“Bradford make a marketplace to sell our designs, free of fakes, and filtered through the eyes of you, the eternal optimist.”

My mission in life became crystal clear as my back soaked in sweat in the hot Georgian sun.

Since that day I’ve corralled the world’s best cofounders, hired an amazing team, raised capital from inspiring investors + angels, and we launched a thriving company too. You can read about how we built the Bezar brand here. 

Seven months since launching our first Pop-Up Shops to the public, today we compliment that business with Storefronts, our take on an e-commerce marketplace. It’s different than other marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy and 1stDibs and Farfetch and eBay. It’s designed for modern designers. It’s curated by passionate design lovers (led by yours truly). It’s built for design businesses who are smack dab in the middle: too small and too smart to sell to big box retailers yet too big to consider their passion, their livelihood, a hobby or a craft.

We’re building a marketplace where this community feels they belong and are willing to be a part of, unlike the open marketplaces available to them today.

Bezar, the design marketplace, today expands our curated marketplace platform to launch permanent storefronts for designers to showcase their products. That means we will have breadth of product 24/7, 365 days a year, across many different categories. That’s a big addition to the Bezar of yesterday.

Time-limited Pop-Up shops will continue to feature new designers, exciting brand collaborations, and Bezar exclusive products. That’s not changing. But we see real value in combining our Pop-Up model with an evergreen marketplace.

This past summer of 2015 I met Andre Balazs’ daughter Isabel. In an hour long conversation she complemented me on Bezar. Coming from someone who has been surrounded by design her entire life and who once lived above Soho’s bygone iconic shop Moss, a specific comment really resonated with me.

She said we at Bezar had created a “dignified platform” for designers of all price points, disciplines, and geography. I smiled. Inside and out. I told her about the upcoming Storefront platform we were building, a permanent home for these designers. She seemed thrilled and I bid her goodbye and walked down the hall to my office. I sat there and thought of Troy and Stephano and my team and our company’s mission and purpose and of that day in Athens where my life suddenly made sense again.

And I smiled and got back to work. Like I am doing right now.