The Annual Maker’s Meet held by The Crafter’s Guild and Esnaf was a collective of makers and creatives to come together, network, take forward inspiration and grow.
Guest speakers included Sanam Asif (Author of Just Like Fire), Ridwana Mohammad (Founder, Food for your Face), and Neha Mashooqullah (Co Founder, Karachi Candle Co) alongside panelists Sukaina Abbas (Enchante), Sumaira Waseem (Sam’s Cake Factory), and Bina Ali (ARTEL). This year’s hi tea emphasized learning and personal development for attendees.
The inspiration segment touched upon struggles and setbacks, a path to perseverance, and a way forward finding one’s own calling. The attendees varied in background, all having crafts and home based ventures as common ground.
The event was well attended by home 40 chefs, crafters, artists, designers and creatives. Chef Zarnak Sidhwa was also an esteemed guest for the evening.
In honor of completing ten years as The Crafter’s Guild, Varah Musavvir (Founder and CEO) shared the insight to Esnaf, the online marketplace recently launched for makers in Pakistan by The Crafter’s Guild and Firefly.
The vision is to empower home based enterprises through e-commerce. Esnaf has been created to assist small and medium scale businesses with growth of their ventures by providing them estores on a platform exclusively to support handmade.
Countless businesses have alright subscribed on the newly launched marketplace and have begun making sales.
Esnaf encourages creative businesses to open estores at nominal subscriptions and to make sales for their endeavors on a professional platform.
This will shift opportunities and ways forward for countless women led ventures who do not have resources or access to developing websites, or building online presence from scratch.
The pandemic has altered the means in which consumers shop, this also implies their mode of shopping has greatly shifted online, versus in person or in markets. Esnaf intends to support online shopping for buyers and sellers both across the craft fraternity in Pakistan.
The Annual Maker’s Meet series is scheduled to take place in Lahore on the 20th of November, and Islamabad on the 11th of December.
