The Arts Organization Helping Transform Appalachia’s Craft Economy

For the past few years, Ratliff has both worked for and received support for her art from Nest’s Makers United program. Nest is a New York-based nonprofit committed to unlocking the power of craft to advance economic opportunity and gender equity in the United States and around the world.

Makers United supports historically marginalized makers in the craft economy by removing the barriers to accessing business development resources and e-commerce opportunities they need to grow their small businesses.

In 2023, that commitment led Nest to expand Makers United to Appalachia, starting with 54 counties in eastern Kentucky, where they identified not only the need for economic investment but recognized the potential for growth in the craft sector, especially in rural and digitally disconnected communities.

As a result, the program delivers one-of-a-kind support by working with local and regional efforts to improve makers’ e-commerce readiness and enhance their business’ e-commerce performance to help folk artists market and distribute their work.

The program has helped Ratliff learn everything from profit loss to graphic design and marketing, skills that help her get her works of art in front of potential buyers.

A $300,000 grant from Mastercard Strive USA—a philanthropic initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, which provides small businesses with the support they need to thrive—will help Nest support more artists in the area. In total, the grant will help Nest increase the number of Appalachian artisans it supports by over 40%, connecting more than 120 makers with training, funding and business development resources by 2027.

E-commerce opportunities

Nest has a footprint in over 125 countries, says Rebecca van Bergen, who founded Nest in 2006 and is the nonprofit’s current executive director.

While supporting local makers of handmade goods is a growing trend, she says, that often means supporting makers in Brooklyn or in Portland, Oregon, the kind makers who often have access to more economic opportunities and disposable income to grow their businesses. According to the Appalachian Regional Commission, a majority of eastern Kentucky counties rank among the bottom 10% in the nation in terms of economic well-being, a figure often correlated to areas that experience a significant digital divide.

“Makers United is really about identifying those communities that might face disproportionate access issues to growing their micro-small businesses,” van Bergen says. “Appalachia was obviously one of those locations.”

Nest learned that one of the biggest issues for rural Appalachian makers was using e-commerce, says van Bergen. Through one-on-one conversations with makers and through a survey, Next discovered that 49% of makers said growing online sales is one of their biggest barriers to business growth.

“Appalachian makers felt kind of disconnected from being able to successfully sell online, which was both kind of a know-how issue, like technical expertise on how to do that, and how to grow a client base, and professional photography, and all of those kind of pieces that go into e-commerce,” she says. Moreover, a lot of makers in Appalachia, unlike some of the other places where Nest works, felt isolated and digitally disconnected, especially compared to urban makers.

In fact, earlier this year, Nest conducted a survey of nearly 100 makers in Eastern Kentucky and found that:

• 49% said challenges with online sales were a barrier to business growth.
• 46% mentioned inability to access capital as a barrier to business growth.
• Only 24% said they are closely connected to the people and resources they need to grow.

Severe weather impacts rural makers

Like much of Appalachia, Hurricane Helene has impacted eastern Kentucky, which continues to face flooding issues, dangerous cleanup conditions and large-scale rebuilding efforts.

Ratliff says that severe weather is causing greater damage more often to the region, which recent studies show is part of a bigger, long-term trend driven by climate change and warming ocean temperatures. In one study published in October, Texas A&M researchers analyzed weather patterns in the southern and southeastern U.S. and found that storms that used to occur once in a century—like Hurricane Helene—are now more than twice as likely to occur.

“In the last 10 years, I’ve watched wildfires, tornadoes and floods take out three of the towns that I’ve lived in,” Ratliff says. “I’ve never experienced that in my life, and it’s not something that is normal, and it’s now becoming like a regular occurrence.”

Van Bergen says most of the Appalachian makers she knows work from home. And if they lose their home, they lose not only where they live but where they work. “You have kind of a double impact if you have a flood, because then you lose your home and your life and your livelihood,” she says.

After Helene, Nest partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund, Etsy and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to create a guidance document on how makers can apply for funding if they lost a critical part of their business. “If you lost your sewing machine, your inventory, all these things in addition to your home,” van Bergen says, the guide helped artists craft their application “in a way that won’t get you denied FEMA funding.”

Casey Papendieck, owner of Turtle Farm Pottery in Campton, Wolfe County, Kentucky, says Hurricane Helene has severely impacted his business.

“I don’t even know how it’s going to play out yet, but we get all of our clay made commercially,” he says. “We purchase from a manufacturer in Asheville, North Carolina. They make our clay, and we buy all our dry materials for making our glazes from them, and a lot of our tools and equipment. They’re our main distributor, where we get almost everything for our business, and they’re completely offline still. I’ve had no updates from them.”

Luckily, he says, he buys in bulk and has enough supplies through the end of 2024.

“But I have no idea going into 2025 if we’re switching distributors, or if they’re coming back online, or what’s going to happen,” he says. “That’s definitely where our business is a little bit in flux. It definitely got my attention: What does this mean for our business?”

Still, despite the setbacks, Ratliff and Papendieck say they wouldn’t change their situations.

“For me, it’s like, how do you describe home?” Ratliff says, describing why she always finds her way back to Kentucky. “And that’s kind of what it is—there’s something a little bit indescribable about it.”

Kristi Eaton

Kristi Eaton is a freelance journalist in Oklahoma, formerly with the AP in Oklahoma and South Dakota. She covers social justice issues, gender, travel and more, with a focus on solutions-based stories. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Washington Post and elsewhere. Visit her website at KristiEaton.com or follow her on Twitter @KristiEaton.