Similar to online marketplace etsy.com, the Rust Belt Market, located at 9 Mile Road and Woodward Avenue in Ferndale, is a place for creative small business owners to come and present their goods to the community. However, unlike Etsy, there are no shipping charges.

 

Unique vendors and goods

Vendors at the Rust Belt sell a variety of items. Products include, but are not limited to, works of visual art, jewelry, clothing, food and handmade soaps.

Dawn Nelson sells handmade jewelry, hats, dolls and art canvases at the market. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t creating jewelry.

As a child, Nelson would repair and untangle her grandmother’s jewelry while her adult family members would play Monopoly. She remembers making the jewelry with whatever she could find, which was frequently safety pins, floss and seed beads.

Not all vendors at the market have been crafting, in this sense at least, their whole lives.

Gary Holdwick began creating birdhouses in April 2000 when he had a serious work accident that almost resulted in the loss of his arm. While rethinking what to do with his life, Holdwick started creating birdhouses out of old tree stumps.

“I came close to cutting my arm off, so it was one of the lose life-threatening, career-altering injuries, so this came out of a need to really sort of reinvent myself,” he said.

Holdwick drives 108 miles from Kinde, Mich. every weekend to be a part of the Rust Belt. His works are often one-of-a-kind because he uses materials in his work that are sometimes close to 100-years-old.

 

Working together for success

Tiffany Best, who founded the market with her husband Chris, enjoys the collective atmosphere in which one person alone cannot make the market successful.

“Everyone has to come together and work for the greater market, essentially, and that’s what makes it the Rust Belt,” she said.

Jean Ann Miller, director of the Center for Student Activities, said she frequents the Rust Belt Market for their handcrafted goods.

“There are just unique items to look at shop and buy,” Miller said. “It really is a unique shopping experience. They have something for everyone at all ages.”

According to Chris Best, co-founder of the market, one of the most difficult parts about the day-to-day operation of the market is policing vendors to make ensure quality products.

“Nothing is mass-produced overseas, we can’t take that — I hate that,” Best said. “I’ve had to constantly go around and make sure no one’s being sneaky and if they have too many offenses I have to ask them to reconsider their participation in the market.”

Best also said that he would rather lose the money the vendor brings in than allow someone to sell something of a poor quality.

The market is open exclusively from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Local bands often play on the stage in the middle of the market’s floor.