More than a Marketplace - Welcome to SmallRun!

Hello! I figured the first Build Log should be about the platform itself and why we built it, so here goes...

SmallRun aims to be a home for small makers - people running a shop out of a spare bedroom, a garage, or a corner of the kitchen table. The kind of operation where "fulfillment" means walking a package to the mailbox on the way to get coffee. There are already plenty of places to sell things online, and most of them are excellent at being big. We wanted something that was good at being small.

We also want to be more than just a typical marketplace, we want to be a place where sellers can share the stories of what they're building - and market their products by engaging with an audience who might care more about how something was developed. You don't even need to sell anything to post Build Logs - geek out and showcase your interests!

Here's how it works. Sellers open a shop, list products, and ship orders. Buyers browse, follow the shops they like, and check out. Stripe handles the money. Shipping labels are bought and printed right inside the seller dashboard at the carrier's rate - no markup - what the carrier charges is what the seller pays. The platform takes a small commission on each order, and that's it.

A few things that make SmallRun different:

1. Sellers get paid directly. Payouts go from the buyer's card to the seller's Stripe account without sitting in a platform pool. Nobody is holding your money hostage, and nobody else can decide when (or if) it gets released.
2. You own your audience. Shops have followers, a built-in feed for Build Logs and updates, and direct lines to the people who buy from you. If you ever decide to leave, you take your customer list with you - it was always yours.
3. Transparent fees, transparent shipping. Carrier rates are shown at cost. Commission and per-order fee are published, not buried. You should be able to do the math on a sale in your head.
4. We won't play games, do A/B testing for engagement or algorithmically hide content.
5. Built for small batches. Variants, limited runs, add-ons, made-to-order are all first-class. The product model doesn't assume you're a warehouse.
6. Multi-currency support and tax collection out of the gate, with VAT/IOSS processing coming very soon.

I'll post here as new/interesting features get added. If you're a seller reading this early - thank you, and please tell us what's annoying. That feedback will help us grow together.

-Aron (SmallRun Admin)