Some of the talented potters, furniture makers, iron workers and textile weavers Suzy Ekman once met working out of their homes in the Alabama countryside probably would have done pretty well selling their hand-crafted goods at one of her stylish Makers Market stores in Lafayette, San Jose’s Santana Row, Napa and Sebastopol.
Suzy Ekman, is one of a new kind of entrepreneur in the Bay Area, creating new marketplaces through which local artisans can connect with customers. (Photo courtesy of Makers Market)
Ekman met these artisans as a young girl in the 1970s, riding around on a motorcycle with her father, a machinist with the Apollo space program who did woodworking and rebuilt cars in his spare time.
“Whenever we would go to those places, we would stop and watch and hear their stories. I was fascinated,” Ekman says, explaining how she developed an early appreciation for the beauty and integrity of American craftsmanship.
Decades later, Ekman — then living in Pleasanton — left her management consulting career to launch the first Makers Market store in 2014, a response to the difficulty craftspeople have long had in finding markets for their products.
Now, as the U.S. is experiencing a craft renaissance, Ekman has become one of a new kind of entrepreneur in the Bay Area. They are founding companies, nonprofits and other professional communities that create new marketplaces through which local artisans can connect with customers.
These marketplaces include Ekman’s “rustic refined” brick-and-mortar stores in upscale shopping areas; pop-up or “micro-retail” retail stores, like San Jose Made’s Moment shops in San Jose; as well as online stores, social media campaigns and special craft-focused exhibits. These entrepreneurs also have launched well-organized outdoor street fairs taking place around the Bay Area on an almost weekly basis and bringing new energy and foot traffic to downtowns.
Ryan Sebastian, founder and CEO of Movable Feast and owner of San Jose Made, stands at Pedro Square Market in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, June 12, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
“We had incredible attendance – 30,000 people,” Ryan Sebastian says about SJ Made Fest, the large outdoor event his company San Jose Made hosted in History Park on the last weekend in May. The festival featured more than 250 local vendors, including some 50 food stalls associated with San Jose Made’s sister company Movable Feast.
“I actually don’t know where these people parked, but it was a nice weekend and people were just coming out,” Sebastian said. “I mean, it’s a nice place to go out, be with other people and look at really beautiful handmade things.”
At the fairs, customers can browse stalls, meet the artisans, learn about their work and enjoy the thrill of finding that one unique, hand-crafted item for their homes or personal use or to give as gifts. For artisans, these new marketplaces give them places to meet fellow makers, network and build a professional community.
These new entrepreneurs like Eckman and Sebastian put an emphasis on how they curate their marketplaces, working with vendors — skilled professionals, talented emerging artists or small businesses — who produce quality, well-made products.
They also seek variety and diversity in goods that are sold in their stores or at their fairs. For example, San Jose Made events feature vendors who sell classic crafts-fair items — ceramics, candles, leather goods, etc. But the company also has become the go-to place for new lines of small and mostly affordable pieces made by local illustrators, Sebastian said. These are bright, colorful stickers, key chains and refrigerator magnets depicting cute animals and manga-style figures that have become popular with Gen Z customers.
Adam McKinnon of McKinnon Collective uses a sewing machine to make leather goods during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Plants in artistic figurine pots are displayed for sale in a merchant’s booth during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
A festivalgoer smells a candle in a merchant’s booth during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Festivalgoers buy cat-themed goods in a merchant’s booth during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Festivalgoers buy cat-themed cards in a merchant’s booth during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Show Caption
1 of 5
Adam McKinnon of McKinnon Collective uses a sewing machine to make leather goods during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
For some events, organizers aspire to create “experiences” for customers, beyond the shopping. They include food stalls with chefs and bakers to add a culinary dimension, while entertainers can turn events into cultural happenings. At SJ Made Fest, a K-pop troupe performed high-energy dance numbers, while Head West, which hosts marketplaces in San Francisco and Los Altos, kicked off Pride Month at the Ferry Building with a show by the “rollinhomos” – drag performers on roller skates. The more multi-faceted these fairs become, the more they become destinations.
Sebastian says people are clamoring for opportunities to get out in public to see beautiful things, socialize and soak up the energy of the crowds, especially since the pandemic. Before 2010, these marketplaces didn’t really exist with any regularity or on this scale, according to Sebastian.
Festivalgoers follow the dance moves of Katherine Gao and Jessalyn Ocampo, of San Francisco’s K-Pop-Up Dance, during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
That’s around the time that Janet Lees co-founded the nonprofit SF Made, another professional community in the Bay Area through which artisans can promote their work. Oakland-based custom furniture maker Jason Lees, Janet’s husband, says that at first SF Made mostly focused on promoting San Francisco artisans; he wanted to create something “broader” to serve the region as a whole.
Now he runs Bay Area Made, a membership organization that includes some of the region’s most well-established brands, including Heath Ceramics, Humphry Slocombe ice cream and St. George Spirits. Bay Area Made showcases their work through newsletters, gift guides and special exhibitions.
Furniture designer Jason Lees, founder of the regional artisan collective Bay Area Made, sits in the living room which features a custome made walnut wood console he made in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, June 20, 2026. Lee’s home includies a walnut dining table, and a mixed walnut and birch wood stereo cabinet. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group
“It’s basically building awareness of why you should buy local, and the value of buying quality lasting products,” says Jason Lees.
Jimmy Brower launched his first Head West marketplace in Emeryville in 2017. Like San Jose Made or Ekman’s Makers Market events, Brower charges vendors fees for participating in the fairs his company runs throughout the year in Walnut Creek, Los Altos, San Mateo, Berkeley and San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza. Brower tries to keep the fees low, but enough that he can cover the cost of operations. Brower explains he’s not getting rich off this business; he calls Head West “a social enterprise that is supporting creatives.”
“I wanted to create a model that was about connecting creatives with neighbors, and neighbors with creatives,” says Brower, who used to make large-scale wall hangings while holding down a corporate retail job at Levi’s.
Sebastian’s path to San Jose Made also comes from being an artisan — one who wanted to create a community in the South Bay for small business owners like him. In 2010, the San Jose native was a transportation planner who started an ice cream truck with his wife, a chef, hoping that running their own venture would give them a more flexible schedule as they started a family.
He laughs at himself now for thinking he’d ever have more free time, especially after he began collaborating with other food truck-chefs to create mobile culinary events. This was the start of his company Movable Feast, which in turn partnered with the newly established San Jose Made to organize street fairs, featuring both food and crafts. Sebastian acquired San Jose Made in 2016.
Moment pop-up stores where local artisans sell their work is at Pedro Square Market in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, June 12, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
Ryan Sebastian, founder and CEO of Movable Feast and owner of San Jose Made, stands at Pedro Square Market in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, June 12, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
Moment pop-up stores where local artisans sell their work is at Pedro Square Market in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, June 12, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
Show Caption
1 of 3
Moment pop-up stores where local artisans sell their work is at Pedro Square Market in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, June 12, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
The fact that these destination events were organized around the work of artisans seems to demonstrate the strength of today’s American crafts industry. In a 2021 Smithsonian report, author and historian Glenn Adamson wrote: “Not even the Arts and Crafts movement, which ended a century ago, achieved the scale of today’s artisan economy – or anything like its diversity.”
Adamson charts the origins of the craft renaissance to the 1960s, when the counterculture “infused craft with a new attitude, positioning it as explicit means of opposition to heartless enterprise.” The industry really took off with the rise of the internet, which gave craftspeople and small enterprises new tools for marketing their wares.
Digital technology – which allowed the takeover of commerce by Amazon and other online retailers — helped spur many people’s needs to find a balance, Bay Area entrepreneurs say. In the craft world, that balance can come from engaging in the ancient human practice of making things by hand, or by supporting those that do.
Festivalgoers smell candles in a merchant’s booth during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Festivalgoers Steven Bender and his 5-year-old Pudelpointer, Calvin, of Mountain View, match their outfits during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Festivalgoer Diana Garcia Rodriguez of San Jose looks at plants in a merchant’s booth during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Adam McKinnon of McKinnon Collective uses a sewing machine to make leather goods during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
A merchant calls a customer for their shaved ice order during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Festivalgoers attend the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Show Caption
1 of 6
Festivalgoers smell candles in a merchant’s booth during the SJMADE Fest at History Park in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, May 30, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
The desire for that human connection is among the reasons that Sebastian and others feel optimistic about the future of the American craft industry and associated businesses like theirs. Ekman says she’s regularly contacted by Bay Area property developers who’d love to have a Maker Market come to their mall or downtown.
Sebastian and others say authenticity is a quality that many of their customers are looking for, in their personal lives or in the objects they surround themselves with. In an age of global, 24/7 mass production and distribution, “how do find something of value that’s important to you?” Sebastian asks.
For people with disposable income, splurging on a once-highly-prized item like a Coach handbag no longer feels special anymore, Sebastian says. That’s why a discerning consumer might head to a craft fair where they can pick up a truly one-of-a-kind purse, handmade by the person standing in front of them.
“I do think there’s something about people wanting to feel that connection – and I think supporting and seeing the person who actually makes the product you enjoy hits a little bit of that,” Sebastian says.