A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR MARKET PLACE AND ITS FOUNDERS – JAN GLOVER AND SONYA ENKELMANN...

Jan Glover and Sonya Enkelmann are two busy mums living in Hobart. After meeting at a mother’s group and becoming good friends, Jan asked Sonya if she’d be interested in starting a business … and after a lot of discussions, pondering and wondering, we decided to take the plunge.

We are really proud to have developed Your Market Place using a business model which put the community at its heart. Your Market Place is all about supporting our local businesses, but providing people with the convenience of shopping online. We think it is a real win for everyone, and a model which can keep our money in our local communities.

Your Market Place started out of desire for a better way to recycle all the clothes, bikes, instruments and ‘stuff’ that you accumulate when you have kids. This idea evolved into a second hand classifieds, and then has further morphed into other services that added value to our families lives by saving them time and effort, but gave them greater choice.

We wanted to connect people to our small local businesses — people often want to shop locally but find it hard because they either don’t know what is out there or it is too hard to do the rounds of the butcher, the bakery, the fruit and veg shop, let alone anywhere else. We decided to make it as easy as possible to buy from our local shops and use the latest technology as the means to do it.

Your Market Place was born.

Jan is a midwife by training and has a large family with husband Dave. She is the creator/innovator of the relationship and has found an outlet for all her brilliant ideas! Sonya, with her two children and husband Andrew, has enjoyed the adventure of starting a business from scratch. Working with businesses as a public servant provided a sound basis for a lot of the background work, but it has also been a steep learning curve. We are both loving the challenge of being in business.

We’ve also been incredibly fortunate to have met two (endlessly) patient and talented people, who form an essential part of our team: Anita Pava from Stream Art Design, and Graham Brown from MediaRare. This idea would not have taken off if it wasn’t for them. We are constantly amazed at the advice and solutions they have presented to us.

Your Market Place launched its first market place, the Hobart and southern Tasmania region, in June 2011. We plan on taking it to the rest of the country as well, so watch this space!