50 Local Small Businesses in One Shop!

After spending almost 5 years in Los Angeles, I recently moved to North Dakota where I grew up and graduated from The University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. This past month I made this wonderful discovery where their are “50 local small businesses all in one shop”.

Inside the MidTown Marketplace you will find all kinds of niche creator shops that sell everything from books, clothing and furniture to breads, desert, and art. This marketplace is a true hidden gem in Grand Forks.

As an entrepreneur and mentor/coach for startups and small businesses, I found this retail concept genius. Especially for a city like Grand Forks that has a desire for creatively made products and long history of supporting locally owned small businesses.

With retail having hit a bit of a decline nationally the past decade and the typical investment required for a large retail space (even in Grand Forks), the genius behind the MidTown Marketplace is that entrepreneurs can launch their own retail business for a fraction of the cost and still have a sizeable in-store footprint while selling their merchandise.

Aside from the low inventory investment required and minimal monthly cost for the in-store footprint, there is one checkout for the entire store. This makes it easy for shoppers to purchase multiple products at once, and the shop owners don’t need to be on location daily like you would have with a typical retail space.

This concept is even further more genius (I know that’s not a phrase) from a marketing perspective as now you have 50 mini-shop owners all talking about, promoting, posting on social, and sometimes advertising for one combined space - the MidTown Marketplace. This is truly genius as a modern retail concept.

Here are several pictures from inside the marketplace. I will talk a bit more about the first few items I purchased below the images.

My favorite shop items.

The items I loved the most here is ALL of it really. However, if I narrowed it to five favorite things, I would say that furniture, handcrafted art pieces, premium breads & deserts, unique pet accessories, and the book & gift shop were my favorite. I’m a sucker for a bookstore.

What I bought.

I purchased a vintage dining table with 4 chairs, these amazing frosted lemon cookies, and this incredible Challah bread. You can kind of see the table (minus the chairs I had brought to the car) in the first image above.

I hope you found this interesting. If you live in the Grand Forks area, I highly recommend stopping by the MidTown Marketplace on your next retail shopping trip. You can follow the MidTown Marketplace on Facebook HERE.