Today we’d like to introduce you to Christina Weaver.
Hi Christina, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
The Women’s Creative was built by two other local women-business owners and myself. It started originally as a small group of women-owned businesses that gathered every few months at local spots (primarily in Saint Louis City) to sell their products. After a few of these events, word spread that they were happening and more women wanted to be involved.
As we grew we quickly realized that there are hundreds of women who have started and are building small creative businesses in the Saint Louis region. These women are using these businesses to increase income levels and financial stability for their families, provide needed medical care, fulfill creative passions, connect with other women, share wellness solutions that they have learned with their community and so much more. Their passion for their work and the gift they were extending to Saint Louis was significant. Bringing them together to support each other and fill in the knowledge they needed to grow their business was a clear and achievable goal for our team and we stepped into it.
Demand for our markets was high and businesses would often asked questions about marketing, sales and business growth. In the Winter of 2018, we decided to host a series of courses taught by established business owners and experts in town on specific topics. As we grew those courses, we built a monthly membership service to provide a virtual space and in-person events for our growing community to connect, collaborate and have ongoing access to the learning materials and resources.
We have continued to host vendor markets and marketing events for small businesses AND have built and maintained our subscription service. We now are a team of seven women, we run over 20 markets and events a year that feature local women-owned and creative businesses. Our virtual community is now housed on a user-friendly App software that allows women to join peer groups, watch dozens of workshops and courses at their leisure, review curated lists of resources and have one-on-one business support when they need it for one low monthly fee.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It has been a roller coaster. When we first started, no one who was leading The Women’s Creative wanted to keep it going. We all ran our own businesses, were mothering small children or managing families of grown children and had a variety of other interests and priorities. We kept it going because the demand for what we were doing was so high.
We also always had fun throwing our vendor markets, which have turned into big shopping parties for the community!
During Covid, we worked so hard to support a flailing community of small businesses who were reeling from all of the changes and restrictions on their work. We volunteered our time to develop 314Together – a marketing campaign that rallied the community around small businesses and raised money for the Gateway Resilience Fund. All while we were pivoting events online, supporting our families and managing our other businesses.
In the last year, we have been through leadership changes, we have struggled to provide the level of service to our members that we want and have been distracted by projects that didn’t serve our community well, were reactionary instead of visionary or were things we did not have the capacity to do well.
In all of the ups and downs, we have learned the importance of understanding our mission, saying no to projects that are not directly in line with our strategy and goals and staying positive. It’s harder to run events and build community than ever before, and we have learned a new pace, a new level of creativity and a deeper level of respect for the women we work with. They are warriors and we work every day to create services that make their work easier, provide freedom from roadblocks through key knowledge and resources, and the encouragement they need to feel empowered.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
The Women’s Creative exists to dare creative brands to impact their world. We provide a portfolio of sales, marketing and business growth services for women-owned businesses. These include vendor markets and experiential events that connect creative businesses with a focused audience, a virtual community subscription that provides community, key knowledge courses, curated resources and peer groups through an app at your fingertips, and THIS YEAR we are opening a retail concept that will deliver retail as a service for business growth to product based businesses.
We are known for supporting women-owned creative businesses, telling their story and encouraging the community to rally around them.
There aren’t a lot of businesses locally or nationally that do what we do, but what sets The Women’s Creative apart from other vendor events or subscription services is our commitment to listen to what our businesses want and need to provide services, crowd-sourced knowledge and enthusiastic collaboration around their specific needs.
I am most proud of the brand that we have built and the way that it celebrates and prioritizes creative business owners, encouraging our community to prioritize local, women and minority owned because it is good for all of us!
I’d love for anyone reading to come to one of our events and spread the word to your entrepreneurial friends that we exist and that they can join us anytime to as we build our businesses alone, together.
How do you think about happiness?
At TWC we build holistic goals. They are not just revenue focused. We measure how safe and welcoming our community is, how engaged all of the members of our community are, every type of diversity, the success of our vendors at events, the success of our sponsors in their goals and more… We individualize our work as much as possible while keeping scale in mind so that we can grow.
We are insanely energized when we succeed these and find joy in seeing these non-traditional goals met. When someone attends an event and says that they have never had an experience like ours – they felt welcome, seen, heard and valued in their conversations or they built long-term client/customer relationships AND sold more than they expected, we know we have succeeded.
Growing our business WHILE we provide unparalleled service to our community is the most energizing, joy-filling experience and something that keeps our entire team going (and they are AMAZING at it). We don’t always succeed, and have failed women and will continue to – but we are excited when we get it right.
Pricing:
- Our Subscription service is $45 a month.
- Our vendor experiences are all priced a bit differently, but our standard vendor booth fee is $100 a day.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@
thewomenscreative.com - Website: thewomenscreative.com
- Instagram: thewomenscreative
- Facebook: thewomenscreative
- Youtube: thewomenscreative
Image Credits
Tori Wright
