Female-Founded Tech Company Launches City Shoppe Digital Marketplace For Local Goods

November 13 02:39 2020
Female-Founded Tech Company Launches City Shoppe Digital Marketplace For Local Goods

November 12, 2020 – A Portland-based, female-founded tech company has launched City Shoppe, a shopping platform that’s specifically designed to help local retailers sell and get discovered while putting money back into the local economies. Debuting in Portland, City Shoppe helps consumers easily shop locally in any city while also empowering small business owners to automate their businesses and grow their revenues.

“Big box stores have Amazon, artists and crafters have Etsy, gyms have Class Pass, and restaurants have GrubHub, Caviar, and more. I realized local retailers needed something, and that’s where City Shoppe comes in,” said Ashley Cintas, founder and CEO. “Anything we buy through a big box retailer, we can find within our local community. With the increase in consumers shopping digitally, City Shoppe acts as a local search engine and marketplace in one, to make shopping local easier, and more convenient than ever before.”

With experience as a small business owner, Cintas knows how difficult it is to sell online and scale a business in the best of times, and the last six months have been particularly challenging as local retailers have had to pivot very quickly to survive during quarantine and mandated COVID regulations. She purposely designed City Shoppe to be a virtual local shopping experience aimed at bringing back the connection of shoppers getting to know who they are buying from and why the products were made.

A lot of small retailers don’t have eCommerce sites or the resources to expand their online audiences, so City Shoppe offers a suite of services to vendors, including vendor page creation, 24/7 customer support, scheduled shipping and delivery, brand recognition and discovery, cross-marketing opportunities, and automatic POS integration and website sync. More than 150 vendors in the Pacific Northwest and New York areas have signed on to sell on City Shoppe; examples of Portland vendors include Simple Alchemy, MAE, and Bull in China.

In addition to supporting local retailers, City Shoppe will also have a positive impact on local economies because it’s keeping money in cities through state taxes. “Shopping online through national chains, while convenient and easy, has major economic drawbacks in terms of where taxes go,” said Cintas. “If you spend $100 at a national chain, only $43 stays in the community. When you spend $100 at a local business, $68 stays in the community. That’s a big deal when you start thinking about how cities fund public schools, infrastructure, hospitals and more.

As for shoppers, City Shoppe’s editorial, curated design fosters discovery and exploration similar to Pinterest. “It’s important to me that the shopping experience is more than just transactional. It needs to have aspects of digital tourism woven in so visitors feel like they’re physically shoping in a city. The graphics and design of the site are warm and inviting for a reason,” said Cintas.

Beyond the visual identity of the site, City Shoppe offers a seamless shopping experience for both vendors and consumers. Consumers add products to their cart and checkout. Vendors are immediately notified of the transaction, and encouraged to fulfill the order the same or next day. Portland-area shoppers can expect to receive their order in one to two days or opt for curbside pickup, with same-day delivery through a courier service on the very near horizon. Shoppers who live outside of the city they’re digitally shopping in can expect to receive their order in three to five business days with no shipping fees.

About City Shoppe

City Shoppe is an inspired shopping platform that brings local business global. Founded in 2018 by Ashley Cintas, City Shoppe is a two-sided marketplace to help consumers easily shop locally in any city while also empowering small business owners to automate their businesses and grow their revenues. City Shoppe is currently being piloted in Portland, Oregon, and will expand to more cities around the country by late 2020: CityShoppe.com

Media Contact
Company Name: City Shoppe
Contact Person: Ash
Email: Send Email
Phone: 517982403
Address:2112 NW Quimby
City: Portland
State: OR 97210
Country: United States
Website: www.cityshoppe.com