How to show artists, makers and small businesses your love

What you can do to help (now!)

We love our creative community and everything they add to our lives, there's a lot of uncertainly out there and there's no doubt we'll see a lot of struggle over the coming months. It's an overwhelming time, so we decided to put together a few things you can do now to support makers, small businesses and artists to ensure that they remain in your community long after isolation.

Here's some ways you can show your fave small businesses a little love. 

Purchase a gift voucher

Purchasing a gift voucher is a great way to support small. Set yourself up for an experience, dinner, haircut or retail purchase for the future - it's always good to have something to look forward to (especially now we may be indoors a little more frequently!) 

Stackwood vouchers can be used in our concept store and online, on lush plants, pots, books, hand-made wares, and artisan products or on one of our many seasonal workshops that run year-round.

We have also decided to extend our gift voucher expiry to 18 months to give you longer to shop.

Skip the refund

If an event or service you were going to use has been canceled you can choose to skip the refund. Artists, musicians, makers and cultural institutions are going to be hard hit and any additional income in their pockets goes a long way. 

Rebook into a different time slot, see if you can be serviced in an alternative way or just simply say 'no, thank you!' - you'll be helping to keep the creative eco-system healthy. 
 

Buy tickets to future events

Is there an event, experience or workshop you have always been wanting to attend? Purchase a ticket for later in the year. Life will go back to normal and when it does this will ensure you have lots of fun planned.

We're recommending to our subscribers to book workshops for July onwards, you can see what's coming up in the Stackwood program here.
 

Shop ahead

Have a birthday or wedding coming up? House-warming? Baby arrival? Purchase these presents early (or gift vouchers) and have lots of spare time to creatively gift wrap them. No rushing to the shops the day before. Lots of services are going entirely online and you'll be able to look out for a Stackwood online offering soon.  

Buy well

It can be tempting at a time like this to buy everything on the supermarket shelves, however it's also a great time to be reflective of our why. Why do we buy well? Support local? Actively try to reduce our consumption? The answer to many of these questions is our values. Stick to them and use small retailers to stock up on reusables, well-made objects and artisan wares that will be in your home until well after this uncertain time.
 

Comment, share and like

Getting online and social media active is free. Make an effort to follow all of your favourite small artists and local businesses, and then show them your love by commenting, liking and engaging with their pages. It's likely these businesses (like ours) will be reaching out to you and asking what it is you want to see from them when this whole scenario is over. 
 

Practice kindness

Businesses are being asked to heavily pivot right now just to stay afloat, plus accommodate changes, reassure their customers and respond to more inquiries than usual. So be kind and patient when it comes to rebooking, waiting in line for a service or making changes to an upcoming event. 

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Are we still open? Things are changing daily but the answer is yes (for now!) Our store is open 9am - 3pm Tuesday - Sunday. We have lots of hand sanitiser and are practicing our best social distancing. Read about the measures we've put in place to protect you here. 

We've got everything you need to get your indoor gardening game up to scratch - after all plants make very happy spaces - think pots, plants, potting mix, DIY books, art and more. So if you can, you aren't sick and you don't sit in a risk group, pop on by this weekend to our open-air warehouse and stock up.   

Photo by Rae Fallon