About Maker Waypoint

Help finding your next opportunity.

You know how to make your work. Figuring out where it belongs can take a different kind of help.

Maker Waypoint helps handcrafted artists describe their collection, explore potential customers, and investigate retail stores that could be a fit. You bring your work and your experience. The tool helps organize the questions and research the possibilities.

Built from experience in handcrafted wholesale

Maker Waypoint is being developed with Jacqueline Adamany, whose experience includes designing and wholesaling handbags made in her home studio, as well as her work with artists and retailers through IndieMe Marketplace and IndieMe Academy.

That experience shapes the questions behind each match: would the work complement the store’s inventory? Could its price, style, size, or function add something useful? Do the retail prices and customer setting make sense?

A useful lead needs a reason

A store selling handbags is a starting point. To assess whether it belongs on your list, you need to understand its assortment, comparable retail prices, customer setting, and any sourcing restrictions.

Each new research result includes merchandise evidence, a source link, four fit explanations, and questions to check before outreach. Suggested opportunities are possibilities to investigate. A published assortment cannot tell us everything a buyer stocks or needs.

For artists wherever they sell

Maker Waypoint is separate from IndieMe Marketplace and IndieMe Academy. You do not need membership in either to use it. An IndieMe direct link is optional; an introduction draft can use your own public website or explain how a buyer can request your line sheet.

We are testing a public pilot. You can explore the tool without a ChatGPT account; live research requires an individual access code. The current tool researches U.S. retail stores. It does not promise orders, buyer introductions, exclusive territories, or acceptance by a retailer.