PopUp Connect

Inspiration

Jane is a local independent artist that sells her prints, merch, and other creations. She has a problem -- she wants to expand her customer base, but she has no physical studio space to hold sales. She only posts through social media, but as a small business with no foot traffic coming to see what she sells, she has difficulty growing her platform. Jane relies on local venues, like cafes and bookstores, holding artist vending opportunities, but can really only discover them through social media and word of mouth.

GroundUp Coffee, on the other hand, is a local coffee shop that wants to build a sense of community in their space, and is looking to host events that will bring traffic, help people interact with the community, all while being non-disruptive to their day to day functions.

Enter PopUp Connect: an all in one web application serving the business needs of sellers like Jane and businesses like Gathers, but also alerting community members to these events, increasing foot traffic.

What it does

PopUp Connect has three key functionalities. Shop owners can post upcoming markets, vendors can contact the owners to book a table, and other community members can scroll through their favorite vendors and find upcoming events where they’ll be tabling! In the host tab, there is a form for venue owners to post details about their venue, including how many tables they will be offering, their hourly rate, and amenities. The Vend tab is for local business owners to find businesses hosting markets and contact the business owners to sign up for a table. The Community tab is where other people can find their favorite vendors, and see where they will be setting up shop!

How we built it

We built this platform with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We started by brainstorming ideas and looking at existing solutions to our problem, building a Figma design, and then busting out some code. Each of us was mainly responsible for a different part of the overall website, but it's fair to say teamwork really made the dream work!

What's next for PopUp Connect

Next, we would like to increase the functionality of the website. On the Community page, we would allow people to see all vendors that will be at a specific market. We would also set up the website so people can make accounts. This would make it easier for business owners to track the events they are planning on hosting and the vendors that will be at their venues. We will also include a place for people to review the markets they attended, but also for vendors and venues to review each other. That way vendors and owners would have more clarity when choosing which venues to vend at, and venues would share their experiences hosting markets.