Welcome!
Zahoomi was a project that started out as a combination of my love of crafting and my sense to do my part to help the local economy.
We often complain about the economic downturn and loss of jobs and usually blame outsourcing as a cause for this. After hearing many such conversations I thought what if I actually do something about this instead of just complaining? This was about the time I used to visit the local farmers markets and the craft fairs. Talking to the artists I realized that although almost all of them had an online presence, the common theme among them was how saturated the online venues were. In addition I realized that it was hard to find the local artists online once the markets and fairs were over.
After lots of discussions with my family, I decided to start a venue where the focus would be on on the local shops. My husband spent many months on my project and helped create my website for me. My son came up with several names for the site (beats me how, as I could not come up with even one that was available!) We finally narrowed it down to either Zoom-lily or Zahoomi. When we found out that there was already a store called Zoom-lily our decision was made for us! Zahoomi it was!
Zahoomi is similar to other online selling venues in that you can open your store, add your products, set your policies and sell directly to the buyer. However it is also very different from all the other sites in that when a user goes to Zahoomi, stores are displayed based on proximity to the users location, with the closest stores being shown first. This was our way of trying to connect the buyer to the local sellers. Our hope was if the buyers patronized local stores more, then they would help keep the money local and boost the local economy!
I love the way Zahoomi has shaped up so far(all thanks to my husband, no outsourcing involved!), I hope you do too! All feedback and suggestions welcome.
