How 6AM City Built a Locally-Based ECommerce Platform for a National Audience
We’re scaling up Pride in Place through our marketplace, Six & Main.
6AM City has spent the last five years perfecting our core product, a hyperlocal daily email newsletter delivered across 25 U.S. markets. Earlier this year, we reached over one million subscribers. Now, we’ve expanded our offerings to our engaged bicoastal audience through our new ECommerce arm, Six & Main, giving our audience a chance to wear, hold, and show off their Pride in Place.
We built Six & Main to align audience interest with membership and commerce, creating a diverse and sustainable revenue stream for modern local media companies who want to expand into ECommerce — a natural alignment that strengthens the brand, activates local economies, and supports local creatives and brands. We’ve positioned it for success — and we want to share our tips with you.
Build your audience first.
Don’t try to do everything at once. We built a great product — the newsletter — and then scaled everything from there, one piece at a time.
Our established newsletter audience means we already have our ECommerce audience. When we launched Six & Main, we were able to tell over one million people about it. Having an audience means you have a higher likelihood of surviving and thriving. As we continue to build influence and credibility through all of our products, the size of the audience will grow too.
We also use our newsletters to point readers to the site, and we are seeing newsletters drive traffic and purchases, with a cost per lead that is incredibly low due to the fact that the product we built fits the need for the audience we already have.
Then, listen.
The vision for Six & Main came straight from our newsletter subscribers, who wanted to see local artists and businesses featured more in our products. We know our audience is highly engaged and has expertise and knowledge about their market cities — so we invited them to submit their picks — including self-nominations — for artists and companies in line with our brand.
Six & Main also supports our goals of educating and activating our audience by exposing them to local creatives and brands. Through highlighting what our artists and partners are doing locally, we enable them to continue their work supporting the communities they call home.
Have a plan for inventory and fulfillment.
The pandemic forced many local brands onto online commerce platforms as rent for Main St. storefronts has skyrocketed. But new difficulties have come with this pivot. Inventory and fulfillment are a universal challenge in ECommerce, especially for digital media brands that don’t have access to storage and distribution spaces.
We found an innovative solution: We carry zero inventory, instead using partners to fulfill orders quickly and efficiently. Because of this, we do not face difficulties related to maintaining inventory or operating a warehouse.
Be the marketer.
We worked to identify brands making great products, but that might not have the large marketing budget required to sell their products outside of their immediate area. We’re identifying people, whether they’re smaller brands or individual creators, who are truly local, and helping them grow their business. Our platform gets them in front of one million possible customers, freeing them up to focus on their offerings.
Our goal is to become the go-to marketplace for local makers in our cities, offering ease of purchase and fulfillment, as well as a platform for discovery and delight. Ultimately, we’re working to elevate our local artists and brands, giving them access to a nationwide community they couldn’t reach on their own without a robust marketing team, the cost of which would far exceed their budgets.
We recognize that the best and main way to make money is when our brands are successful. That means a portion of sales goes directly into the pockets of our artists and brands, and that we don’t charge a small fortune every month to allow them to access our audience. Instead, we see the relationship as mutually beneficial. When they succeed, we succeed, and vice versa.
Make it personal.
Six & Main keeps our brands front and center. Each artist or brand gets a profile and a personalized page with their products.
We market products in three different ways: on personal brand pages, where we get to tell a brand’s story, through their city page, where we showcase the brands within specific cities, and then through curated collections, like our Fall Collection, where we mix and match like-minded projects.
Embrace your angle.
Plenty of ECommerce stores exist already, so what sets yours apart? For us, it’s the stories behind the brands, creatives, and our cities. Our specific focus is on selling the stories that lead customers to the products and in turn make them excited about a city. Whether they were born there, moved there and it’s been a safe space, or visited and want to bring home their memories, we create the space that reminds them of the best in those cities.
Has your business recently stepped into ECommerce, or are you considering it? We’d love to know about your experience.
