Our History | We met on Etsy + Fell in love on South Main

Modern Made Memphis (M3) began life as the Memphis Etsy Team in November 2010. It was founded by our fearless leader Tonya Tate to connect local Midsouth creatives who were selling their work on Etsy. Our mission is to connect 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.

One of the first to join the team was the fearless Mary O’Kelly who is the talented, multi-faceted, reviewer and supporter of crazy ideas. Together, the team has connected with hundred of local designers and artisans to build community, learn and sell together. Our very first event was a Christmas Popup Market held on South Main in December 2010 under our first brand name – ISM: Indie Style Market.

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 artists may use production partners who have the equipment and expertise to produce high quality goods and in volume that supports a growing brand.

Our last popup was in Saddle Creek in 2017 and we rolled out a new brand called GIFT for it.