Here at hoizo.com HQ, we have had one of our best weeks ever. New sales, new members and new stores, and while we are still thinking and working on ways to improve the site we are happy that we now have nearly 100 stores up and running.

Last week was so called “mega monday” the biggest online shopping day of the year. The day everyone gets back to work after the weekend and starts buying those all important Christmas presents. This year the big sellers seem to be tablets for the adults and Moshi Monsters and Lego for the kids.

However if you are looking for something different this Christmas then do come and check out one of our sellers.

We have a matchstick mountaineer.

http://hoizo.com/Latinland/Mountaineer-Miniature-Handmade

Some beautiful handmade dogs

http://hoizo.com/Whichcraft-Creations/Mini-Scottie-Dogs

And our newest sellers. A football system and score tracker. Something for any fan of betting and the beautiful game.

http://hoizo.com/FreeCashBuilder/Football-system—score-tracker

Don’t forget hoizo.com is still free. Free to sign up, free to set up a store, and with no selling fees. So don’t forget to set up your own store today.

hoizo.com is proud to launch a new find a friends scheme:

Make friends, make money and win an iPad!

Today we are pleased to launch the hoizo.com find a friend scheme. This is a very simple promotion. Recommend hoizo.com to your friends and for every friend who signs up you will receive a reward.

We will give you (or a charity of your choice if you’re feeling generous) £1 for every person you recommend to set up a free store on hoizo.com.

That’s right. £1 per person. Given directly to you. To do what you wish with. Not only that, but if we reach our target of 500 new stores, then the person who has found us the most friends will win an iPad! Simply ask your friends to sign up to hoizo.com, set up a store and list a minimum of 3 products. Then e-mail your name to hello@hoizo.com (So we know you sent them). What could be simpler?

Any questions, or just to say hi, e-mail me at chris@hoizo.com.

Terms and conditions

1 – The prize is the prize no cash alternative will be given for the iPad.
2 – The offer can be withdrawn at any time.
3 – We are aiming for 500 new stores, the offer will end when we reach this.
4 – You are not allowed to sign up lots of times with one e-mail address. The £1 per person will only be paid for new people.

As much as we love online trading, sometimes you can’t beat a good old craft fair. Hello to everyone we met in Tolworth this weekend! Check out our stall below where we sold some original hoizo designs alongside work by a local artist.

Technology

The internet is an amazing, powerful and transformative technology. However that’s all it is. A technology.

A technology that allows people, and things to communicate. It’s no more complicated than that. However it’s applications are potentially limitless, and we are still only beginning to scratch the surface of it’s potential. What the internet can do is mimic and enhance real experiences. We buy things from the internet because we want to own them in the real world. We connect with people simply because we can’t always see them in person. Even industry changing technology such as the Kindle is designed to mimic a book, in a digital way.

Sustainable Marketplace

hoizo.com is a marketplace, that is designed to mimic the street markets you see in town and cities up and down the country every week. We have built a simple browsing function to allow you to browse easily from store to store, as you can’t physically walk around our marketplace (For now!). hoizo brings together people who want to sell things, with people who want to buy things, and it is doing that very well, however hoizo.com is more than “just another marketplace”. We want to build a marketplace that does good at the same time. We want to build a virtual marketplace, that will have a positive impact on the real world around us. hoizo.com is now a sustainable marketplace. We are going to champion, support, and deliver sustainability, localness, and eco friendly products.

We are also going to start writing about how we can not only build a better, more sustainable world, but build things for the world more sustainably.

As the world’s population increases the demand for the worlds natural resources have never been as high, and will only continue to get higher. Every day there is less and less Oil in the world, and unless we start to live and act sustainability there will be less and less natural resources. This isn’t about giving up our lives and going to live in a tent, it would be cold and we wouldn’t be able to watch Eastenders. It’s about the choices we make, the products we choose, and how we decide to build and support the world around us. Now wouldn’t it be great if there was a marketplace that helped deliver that? You can register here. http://hoizo.com/register

Britain has always been a nation of shopkeepers, and there has been a growing trend for locally sourced goods, brought nearby from independent sellers. Mary Portas’ recent white paper on the future of retail lamented the death of the high street and discussed how it had been out manoeuvred by the out of town superstores with lower prices and free parking. But could a return to more personal shopping, between buyers and sellers, actually help us all, and begin to build a new foundation of trade that could help take Britain out of recession? I certainly think so, and I think hoizo.com is a perfect example of how.

Through trading with independent sellers the money goes straight to them, rather than straight out of the country to a multinational. Every £ you spend goes direct to the seller, rather than direct to the pocket of a CEO.

I think this is a way to use the internet to build a new economy, an economy that is not built on a ‘one too many’ premise but a ‘one – on – one’ one. An economy where money is not spent on a product where most of the investment goes towards the advertising and promotion budget. An economy where money, the money spent on a product, goes to the product maker or the product owner. This is why we built hoizo, this is why hoizo is free, and this is what we are building, a local free shop for everyone, a place for people to try new things, sell new products, a place that tears down the complications, gates and costs of traditional selling.

hoizo is a place where we want to build a new nation of shopkeepers.

We would love you to join us. hoizo.com

Recently hoizo.com added a fantastic new feature allowing buyers to more easily define what kind of products they are looking for. If you want to separate the new from the old or the handmade from the Chinese-made then the new search options are just for you.

Unused, sealed, fresh from the factory, all new items should be just like purchasing direct from the shop.

Also known as used, the loved search option can throw up some real bargains, lost treasures and fantastic antiques.

Most websites don’t give genuine handmade crafts the credit they deserve. In this category you should find lovingly crafted and often unique items.

The new search options are beside the search bar, so you can’t miss them. Always remember to read the description of the item and find out about the seller before making a purchase.

Free listings and 0% final selling fees allow our sellers to undercut the competition. Here we highlight some of the great bargains to be had.

hoizo Compares: Vol 3

hoizo seller Comic Bargains is currently selling the critically acclaimed graphic novel Wanted at a fantastic price. Made into a not so great movie a few years back, the comic far outweighs the quality of what Hollywood was able to offer. Check out his comic shop as all the prices seem to be below the going rate elsewhere. Another fantastic hoizo member!

hoizo.com £5.49

eBay.co.uk £6.99 (lowest current buy it now price)

Amazon.co.uk £6.19

On Friday I had a ticket for the Grason Perry exhibition, “Tomb of the unknown craftsman”. An art/antique exhibition that honoured the craftsmen through history. It finishes in a couple of weeks, but is well worth the visit if you are in London and can get a ticket.

The exhibition got me thinking, about the “cult” of art and artists. For the past 2000 plus years, being an artist or a craftsman was a job. An important and highly thought of job, but still a job, in the same way a carpenter or a builder is now. They were paid a fee to represent in material something (A king, a god, a story.) and then they went on their way. Nowadays that doesn’t seem enough, artists want to be as famous as their art, some more so.

Art & crafts are becoming more and more popular, fuelled by the twin factions of unbridled enthusiast Kirsty Allsop and her homemade everything and George Osborne and his desire to take every spare penny we have. It is no surprise that we have retreated to something more natural, economical and personal. A reaction against the age of spending, and the mass produced, can not be anything but a good thing. It will also breed a new generation of unknown craftsmen. People who create arts and crafts because they want to, because they find it a fulfilling way to produce things themselves. Not because it will make them a fortune, and not because it will make them famous and if they want to sell their items, and showcase them to the world, they can set up a store on our site. As many have already done.

If you’re selling an item that is too big to post, why not use the new hoizo map function? This will give the buyer a good idea of how far away you are from them. When listing an item just click on a rough location of where your based and this will be available for buyers to see. Remember its not mandatory, just another great hoizo bonus feature.