Seattle's WMarketplace Promotes Trade While Empowering Women Entrepreneurs in Ukraine and Beyond
The WMarketplace, Inc. is a Seattle, Washington based, women-owned innovative cross-channel accelerator program empowering entrepreneurs for ecommerce success, driving economic development with technical training for women-owned businesses in the US and globally. With their origins as an eCommerce platform for women-owned businesses coupled with their training role, The WMarketplace made its first international export sale with the participation in their ecommerce accelerator program by an international woman-owned business.
In early 2023, through an introduction from the U.S. Commercial Service office in Seattle, The WMarketplace’s Co-Founder Kate Isler participated as speaker in a webinar series organized by ITA’s Office of Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia in collaboration with the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Ukraine. Over 200 Ukrainian women entrepreneurs and business owners joined each webinar and expressed an interest to participate in follow-up activities. Inspired by the incredible interest and positive feedback on both webinar sessions, together with WMarketplace, ITA’s Office of Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia and AmCham in Ukraine offered a tangible follow-up component to the webinars. Together, they developed a practical international Business Accelerator Program to offer an impactful and measurable combination of ecommerce workshops, custom digital marketing plans, and shipping and logistics services to support Ukrainian women entrepreneurs in the U.S. market.
In November 2023, ITA’s Office of Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia worked with the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine to identify a Ukraine-based sponsor who paid for a pilot program for a Ukrainian woman entrepreneur to join the Business Accelerator Program. The WMarketplace selected Ukrainian woman-owned business, Anzy Home, a producer of handmade home goods, who participated in the webinars, to pilot the Business Accelerator Program.
WMarketplace reported a profit of $10,000 from the successful completion of the pilot program because of solid support throughout the Department of Commerce, spanning Commercial Service Seattle, to Washington DC, all the way to Ukraine.
The Business Accelerator Program, developed through a partnership between ITA’s Office of Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, AmCham Ukraine and The WMarketplace is already changing lives for Ukrainian women while promoting business and trade linkages between U.S. and Ukrainian companies and supporting U.S. small women businesses like WMarketplace. The WMarketplace is expanding this successful pilot with a second cohort, made up of 5 Ukrainian, women-owned businesses, which will launch in the summer of 2024, an additional services export for WMarketplace.
In addition to the Business Accelerator Program, The WMarketplace’s expertise has been utilized by other U.S. government and private sector organizations. WMarketplace trained over 40 Ukrainian women during a two-day workshop organized by ITA’s SABIT program in Warsaw, Poland in April, 2024 and was invited to keynote the U.S. State Department’s Academy for Women’s Entrepreneurship Summit in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in June 2024. While in Slovenia, WMarketplace’s Cofounder, Kate Isler, also hosted a startup and small business marketing workshop at the Ljubljana Technology Park and hosted a roundtable of senior Slovenian women in business with the American Chamber of Commerce Ljubljana.
In May, 2024, in recognition of the work that The WMarketplace does in support of women entrepreneurs in the U.S. and globally they were awarded a Exporters Certificate of Appreciation by the U.S. Commercial Service, Commerce’s export promotion arm.
“As a small, women-owned business, we access all the government resources we can to support both our growth and the growth of the women entrepreneurs who participate in our Accelerator Program. The introductions and counseling provided by the U.S. Commercial Service in Seattle directly supported our services exports and our continued growth into international markets. We are proud to be an Official Strategic Partner of the International Trade Administration and to introduce the invaluable resources offered by ITA to other small businesses.”
~Susan Gates, Co-founder
