‘Feels like the right thing’: Buy from the Bush online marketplace shuts

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An online marketplace designed to help struggling regional businesses during the Black Summer bushfires has been forced to shut down as financial pressures hit retailers and customers.

Four years after her social media campaign drew attention to businesses hit by fire, drought and flood, Buy from the Bush founder Grace Brennan confirmed the online marketplace would close on Wednesday.

Buy from the Bush founder Grace Brennan will close its online marketplace on Wednesday.Credit:

“It just feels like the right thing to do. We launched the marketplace to leverage this enormous opportunity we had to connect city customers with bush business,” said Brennan, from Warren in NSW’s central west.

“It feels like the life cycle of our campaign and our platform is asking us to move in a different direction now.”

Brennan said the retailers selling products through Buy from the Bush were facing financial pressures which made listing on a third-party platform not financially viable. She said the website had also experienced a decline in customers as the cost of living bites.

“It feels like in this economic climate, there’s other things [Buy from the Bush] should be doing,” she said.

The Buy from the Bush website, set up to help struggling regional businesses after the Black Summer bushfires. Credit: https://www.buyfromthebush.com.au/

“Although the truth is that is only part of the decision: we had to weigh up whether we wanted to go through a circle of downturn and continue to invest in the marketplace as our business model.”

Starting as a social media campaign in October 2019, Buy from the Bush grew quickly as a platform to promote regional businesses from communities impacted by a series of disasters, including the pandemic.

“It was trying to not only provide cash flow but also visibility for businesses in the bush because we can’t rely on foot traffic,” Brennan said.

“This sort of campaign might seem like an absolute given post-COVID, but it wasn’t back in 2019. Friends and family in the city who really cared about the bush didn’t have the know-how or the means to support.”

In late 2020, Buy from the Bush partnered with PayPal to open a dedicated online marketplace for regional Australian businesses, stocking more than 250 retailers. The online payment platform’s funding included software licensing costs for two years.

Brennan estimated Buy from the Bush had provided $14 million in revenue to regional businesses during its operation.

Small businesses who sold through Buy from the Bush posted messages of thanks to Brennan on social media after she announced the e-commerce site’s closure last week.

Kate Greenwood, who runs her accessories label, Greenwood Designs, from a workshop at her home in Molong in central NSW, said the platform grew her business significantly.

“It really coincided with the awful drought we were experiencing, and gave us an opportunity to showcase the great stuff that was being made in the bush,” she said.

Greenwood, who had listed on Buy from the Bush since 2020, will continue to sell her products on her own website as well as wholesale through boutiques.

Margot Shannon, owner of Merchant Campbell homewares store at Yass in the NSW Southern Tablelands, said Buy From the Bush “expanded our horizons way beyond our town”.

“At a time when our rural-based economy was really struggling, an injection of metropolitan funds was a shot in the arm we all needed,” she said.

Brennan said the Buy from the Bush Instagram page, which has about 250,000 followers, would remain active as she “took stock a little bit” and considered the organisation’s future, hoping to continue to pursue corporate partnerships for building the business network and highlighting rural Australia’s diversity.

“Often you get a very one-dimensional perspective, with rural issues only trending in times of crisis,” she said.

“But we want to be able to provide a nuance beyond farmers in paddocks when times get tough … we have this incredible untapped resource in the way rural Australia works to solve problems. For me, it’s like a secret sauce. We need to mine in and leverage it.”

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