We were lucky to catch up with Jen Liepis recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Our mission is to connect people with small businesses and the sustainable products they make and/or grow.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
The idea for Love Local came to me when I was shopping! I discovered products that were marketed as safe for the environment and better than their conventional counterparts. When I looked closer, I found that some of the products were made by larger corporations that didn’t have a great environmental track record. I wanted to separate the truly sustainable so I could support brands whose values aligned with my own.
Love Local became a directory, like Yelp, where you can search for specific products, a business type or a location to find products made and grown by people, not giant corporations.
Love Local is different because I’ve researched every company before listing it on the website to ensure it matches our company values. Think locally made, sustainably sourced, fair trade, etc.
The thing I love most about Love Local is connecting with small businesses and telling the stories behind the brands. This is all about people supporting people.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
I love managing people. I think the most important thing is to know what their goals are. We’re all on our own paths and have different interests and goasl we set for ourselves. Understanding what motivates your employees is a win/win. It allows you can tailor their work experience to help them take steps towards their ambition. In turn, you’ll have a happier, higher achieving, and more dedicated workforce.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I decided to create Love Local, I wanted to include farmer’s markets in the directory, because local food is an important part of sustainable living and supporting small. The source data from the USDA was a spreadsheet with 8,000 markets with mostly outdated information. Fact checking each market took me over a year. There were a lot of time when I questioned what I was doing and why, but in the end it paid off. Now Love Local is one of the few places to find reliable data for markets around the country.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lovelocal.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lovelocal/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoveLocal
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-liepis-a93b398/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBbu4_KtdAWpRcAbaTeeQjA
Image Credits
I own the rights to all these images.