The group started in November of 2010 as the Memphis Melange Etsy Team with a mission of connecting local artists, designers, and makers who were selling on the marketplace and supporting one another by sharing information, resources, business tips, and more. We held meetups for existing Etsy sellers and those who were considering selling on the platform and wanted to learn more. Over the years we’ve received several grants for Etsy to support our events.

The Etsy Team hosted out very first craft show on South Main in December 2010 under the brand name Independent (Indie) Style Market. We continued to use this name after we moved to hosting popup shops to allow our participating vendors to sell for longer periods of time.

In 2012, the City of Memphis was awarded a Bloomberg grant to tackle key areas including economic development. The Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team was stood up to manage the fund and they reached out to our team to produce our first month-long popup event in Overton Square.

Four our 2014 popup we changed the name of the organization and retail brand to be Modern Handmade Memphis.

Around 2016 we changed Handmade to just simply Made reflecting the evolving sophistication of the creative community where it’s common to use third-party production partners to produce the goods that they design.