LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Kentucky small business market is getting closer to landing in a permanent location just in time for the holiday season. It’s called MELANnaire Marketplace and has over 430 Black-owned businesses in its network.
MELANnaire Marketplace was founded by Nachand Trabue at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Since then, she’s created a community that’s grown more than she could imagine. Now, for the first time, the business has a storefront in Louisville’s Mall St. Matthews.
Many shoppers couldn’t help but stop and stare at MELANnaire Marketplace, business owner Andrea Wheaten said.
“I have unscented bars, I have these spa salt bars. For those who are looking for something to kind of get their skin that much more softer,” said Wheaten.
Wheaten is the owner of Fraziertown Artisan Soaps, one of hundreds of businesses that make up the MELANnaire Marketplace. The Oldham County native says her soap making journey started while working a nine-to-five job, raising four children with her husband and after her world crumbled two years ago.
She needed something to turn to, so she looked up a YouTube tutorial for soap making.
“I unexpectedly lost my mother in 2020, and one of the things that she always said to me every single night was take care of yourself, take a hot shower, bath, put some pjs on and just relax,” said Wheaten.
Through clean, fresh ingredients like wine and pumpkin, Wheaten creates intricate soaps taking the form of flowers. Fraziertown Artisan Soaps is a nod to her Kentucky roots and an African-American community outside of Louisville.
She even customizes soaps for people who are also grieving a loved one, shown here on her TikTok account.
Before the storefront at Mall St. Matthews, MELANnaire Marketplace was just a pop up market during Juneteenth at 4th Street Live. Wheaten took part in that summer market for the first time in June 2021 and completely sold out.
Trabue said Black Louisville businesses were ringing her phone off the hook to take part when the marketplace was founded in 2020.
“Social media, Facebook inboxing saying ‘hey, what can I do? I need help.’ We’re right here in the middle of a pandemic and not only that, but we are facing civil unrest in the city as well as the entire world,” said Trabue.
At any of the pop-up markets, summer or winter, there could be 25 to 100 vendors selling anything you can think of. Wheaten wants shopping at those vendors to be a new normal.
“I don’t want the small businesses to become a buzzword. Small businesses have been around before social unrest and will be here blessedly long after. So let’s not be a buzzword or just a trend. Let’s make sure there’s some longevity to that,” said Wheaten.
Both Wheaten and Trabue say they’re working their hardest to make that happen and hope it will look like a permanent brick and mortar in the future.
The storefront for the traveling marketplace will be open until the end of the year, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Anyone interested in being a vendor or finding the next location of the traveling marketplace can click here.