Why Shopping Local Is Broken (And What We’re Doing About It)

The moment I noticed

During Covid, like a lot of us, I was doing most of my shopping online. One evening I realized something that stuck with me: it’s easier to buy a product made 3,000 miles away than one made 3 miles away.

Two clicks and a package from across the country was on its way. Meanwhile, the candle maker, the syrup producer, the soap maker down the road? I’d have had to find them at a weekend market, track down a buried website, or already know their name.

That isn’t a shopper problem. That’s a system problem. And it’s why I built Forage Local.

Everyone wants to shop local. Almost no one finds it easy.

Here’s the part that surprised me. People want this. According to Capital One Research (2024), 74% of shoppers prefer to shop local.

But the same research found that 42% of shoppers find locally made products inconvenient and scattered.

Read those together. Nearly three in four of us want to support local makers, and a big chunk of us give up because the experience is a hassle. The intent is there. The infrastructure isn’t.

Great products get drowned out

I spent more than a decade in marketing, and I watched the same story repeat. Incredible local products lost to big brands, not because they were worse, but because they were harder to find. Big brands have ad budgets, warehouses, and algorithms built to put them first.

A maker working out of a studio in Beaverton or a kitchen in Corvallis has a different set of hours in the day. They are busy making the thing. Marketing, shipping, and running a storefront on top of that is a lot to ask.

I believe creators should have a real shot at making their craft their living. That takes a simple, sustainable way to sell, not another platform that rewards whoever pays the most.

What fixing it looks like

Forage Local is built around a few simple ideas.

One place, one checkout, one delivery. Browse 300+ products from Local Brands across the Portland and surrounding areas, check out once, and get everything together. Orders with items from multiple makers arrive as one consolidated shipment.

Delivery that fits where you live. Inside Portland city limits, your order is hand-delivered in a reusable canvas bag on Tuesdays and Fridays. It’s $5, and free on orders of $75 or more. Outside Portland, we ship in boxes anywhere in the US. For now we carry shelf-stable products only, which keeps everything fresh and easy to send.

Search that starts with “near you.” Our search sorts by distance, so the makers closest to you show up first. There is no pay-to-play and no sponsored placement. Nobody can buy their way to the top.

Local you can actually verify. “Local” gets used loosely, so we use three clear tiers:

• Made & Sourced Locally: made and sourced where the brand is based.
• Made Locally: made where the brand is based, with some or all non-local materials.
• Designed Locally Only: designed where the brand is based, produced elsewhere.

You see the difference before you buy, and you decide what matters to you.

Why it matters

When you buy from a Local Brand, your money stays in the neighborhood. It supports a family, pays a local supplier, and helps a maker keep doing the work they love. That’s the point of shopping local, and it shouldn’t take extra effort to do it.

Shopping local should feel as good as it sounds and be as easy as shopping online. That’s the whole idea behind Forage Local, and it’s what the Forage Local Collective, our community of shoppers and makers, is here to build together.