7 online marketplaces for artisans in the Arab world

If you dream of strolling the streets of Egypt or Morocco for a bargain on an traditional handicraft, you can now enjoy the thrill of the hunt without having to endure the heat.

Online marketplace platforms have started popping up all over the internet to fill various gaps in the market. The overarching objective of the platforms is to allow artisans, artists, designers, and small business owners to showcase and sell their creations to a broader audience regionally and internationally.

Here is a (partial) list of online market place platforms for handicrafts in the Middle East and North Africa.

Yomken (Egypt)

Founder: Tamer Taha

Model: A hybrid crowdfunding and open innovation platform that combines Indiegogo and OpenIDEO as a one-stop-shop. Yomken (meaning ‘maybe’) allows artisans and artists to pre-sell their creations to the crowd. The craftsmen are also able to enlist challenges that they may be facing while making a new product and invite problem-solvers (the public) to offer innovative technical solutions. Yomken offers both technical consultancy and financial support to help local producers and artisans bring their products to market. Read more about Yomken on Wamda here.

Cirqy (Egypt)

Founders: Kareem El-Shaffei & Mostafa Talaat

Cirqy is an online marketplace for designers and artists with a social twist; aside from selling their own products, it allows artists to promote and share each other’s products with their friends and networks

Original article by Salma Alheraiqi

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7 online marketplaces for artisans in the Arab world