OpenHands
Mjeshtër: A Marketplace That Pays Albanian Craftspeople Directly — image 1
Mjeshtër: A Marketplace That Pays Albanian Craftspeople Directly — image 2
Mjeshtër: A Marketplace That Pays Albanian Craftspeople Directly — image 3
BUSINESS

Mjeshtër: A Marketplace That Pays Albanian Craftspeople Directly

AB

Ardit Bushati

Organizer

€26,400.00 raised of €55,000.00

48% 177 donors 26 days left
A woman in Krujë weaves a rug over six weeks. A shop on the bazaar street sells it to a tourist for 180 EUR. She was paid 35. This is not a story about villains. The shop carries the inventory risk, the rent and the foot traffic. But the split is what it is because the weaver has no other route to a buyer, and everyone in the chain knows it. Mjeshtër is a marketplace with one hard rule: the maker sets the price and receives at least 80% of it. We take 12%, payment processing takes the rest. Every listing shows who made the object, where, and what they were paid — not as marketing, as a line item the buyer sees at checkout. We have spent seven months signing up makers rather than building software: 64 so far across Krujë, Shkodër, Korçë and Gjirokastër — weavers, silversmiths, woodcarvers, two filigree workshops and a felt maker. Forty-one of them have never sold anything online. 55,000 EUR funds: the platform build through launch, photography for the first 600 listings (the single biggest barrier for our makers), international shipping integration, and eighteen months of runway at a deliberately small burn. Backing tiers: 45 EUR is a launch credit worth 60 EUR on the marketplace. 120 EUR is a curated first-run box from four makers. 900 EUR is a founding partner tier for shops and hotels abroad, including wholesale terms for the first year.
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Updates (3)

48% funded. Two questions keep coming up. Yes, makers can leave at any time and take their listings with them. No, we will not run sponsored placement — search ranking is by relevance and recency only, and that is written into our terms.

The checkout maker-payout line is built and in staging. Screenshot in the gallery. It shows the exact lek amount going to the maker before you confirm the purchase, which is the thing we most wanted to get right.

Makers 65 through 71 signed this week, including a third-generation filigree workshop in Shkodër that has never had a website. Photography starts in Krujë on Monday.

Recent Donors (177)

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Genti Brahimi20d ago

€207.66

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Kwame Ashworth20d ago

€89.00

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Nadia Iqbal20d ago

€89.00

Not much, but every bit counts.

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Claire Bergström20d ago

€120.00

A
Adela Hoti20d ago

€199.00

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Jonida Vata20d ago

€199.00

M
Mateo Ferri20d ago

€60.00

Sending a little. Wish it could be more.

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Genti Brahimi20d ago

€89.00

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Drilona Frashëri20d ago

€25.00

Backed for the launch credit.

D
Dimitri Larsen20d ago

€60.00

Any chance of shipping outside the EU?

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Dimitri Dubois20d ago

€250.00

Worth supporting. Done.

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Bledar Tahiri20d ago

€120.00

Backed for the launch credit.

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Tobias Ashworth21d ago

€45.00

Saw this shared and could not scroll past it.

Anonymous21d ago

€120.00

Happy to help.

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Claire Okafor21d ago

€60.00

Bought a rug years ago and always wondered what the weaver actually got.

C
Camille Dedaj21d ago

€350.00

Not much, but every bit counts.

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Entela Marchetti21d ago

€89.00

Anonymous21d ago

€199.00

Please keep the ranking unsponsored, as promised.

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Genti Brahimi21d ago

€199.00

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Sebastián Iqbal21d ago

€199.00

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