How Mainstreamed Marketplace Started

The idea for Mainstreamed Marketplace came together after Drew graduated high school, a milestone we figured would open doors. Instead, we watched the support system Drew had relied on for years disappear almost overnight - the "services cliff" that hits so many individuals with disabilities the moment they age out of school-based programs. The more we talked to other families, the more we realized this wasn't a one-off. It's a pattern playing out on a massive scale, with families left to figure out the next chapter almost entirely on their own.

That left us with a bigger question: why are there so few sustainable, meaningful employment opportunities for people like Drew? He has incredible strengths and talents to offer, but the jobs available to him in the mainstream market rarely align with them, let alone make room for full-time, meaningful work.

The Exhausting Reality Of The 6 Degrees Of 86 Places

When you have a disability or you're supporting someone with a disability, nothing exists in just one place. Families end up navigating a constellation of systems layered on top of each other - service providers, benefits programs, therapies, job training resources, and more - each with its own rules, logins, jargon, gatekeepers, and paperwork, and no map connecting any of it.

We can't fix all of that. But one piece of it kept showing up everywhere we looked: the lack of real employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for people with disabilities. That's where we decided to start.

Entrepreneurship as an Effective Way Forward

In recent years, we've watched a growing wave of disability-owned businesses and organizations launch, because entrepreneurship gives people the accessibility, flexibility, and creative control that traditional employment often can't. But starting the business or organization is only half the battle - most of them are doing incredible work with almost no visibility, competing for attention in a market that wasn't built with them in mind. Hundreds of them are operating in silos, each building and managing their own website from scratch, reinventing the wheel and fighting to be discovered, when they could be part of one shared ecosystem that makes it easy for the right customers to find them.

Finding real employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, and finding the businesses, products, and services built for this community in the first place - those are the gaps Mainstreamed Marketplace was built to close.

A Vision that Grew

As we dug deeper, we realized the visibility problem didn't stop at disability-owned businesses and organizations. Companies making fidget toys, mobility devices, accessible clothing, and countless other products for the disability community face the same struggle - even when they're not disability-owned themselves, the people who need what they make often can't find them either.

So our vision grew: a platform built for and by the disability community, open to any business or organization that's truly in service of it.

Why "Mainstreamed"

The name "Mainstreamed Marketplace" is a nod to "mainstreaming" in education - the practice of including students with disabilities in classrooms alongside their peers, rather than setting them apart. We wanted to bring that same principle to the economy: the access economy.

Most businesses don't set out to do "good business" - they just do business. They optimize for growth, efficiency, and profit, and those things matter; they're what keep a business running. But on their own, they're incomplete, and over time, short-sighted. Doing good business means asking a different question: not just "does this work?" but "who does this work for - and who does it leave behind?"

The access economy is our answer to that question. It's the shift from treating access and inclusion as extras, to building them into how business works in the first place.

In practice, that means three things:

Mainstreaming Visibility - making disability-focused businesses, products, and services easier to find Mainstreaming Opportunity - creating pathways for economic participation, entrepreneurship, and growth Mainstreaming Connection - linking people & organizations to resources, support, innovation, & each other

Visibility, opportunity, and connection are the groundwork for full economic participation. Mainstreamed Marketplace exists to ensure disability-focused businesses and organizations are seen, supported, and meaningfully connected within the mainstream economy.

What We're Building

Our mission is to advance the access economy. We do this by elevating disability-focused businesses and organizations, making their products, services, and resources easier to discover. We're building a place where accessible solutions are easy to find, and where consumers can connect directly with the businesses and organizations they want to support.

At our core, we're building a community by and for the disability community - one that expands opportunity and elevates underestimated talent. People in this space, and the advocates and supporters who show up for it, already want to back one another. We're giving them a convenient way to do it - every purchase and discovery adds momentum.

Get Involved

If you're interested in becoming a vendor, we offer two different ways to do that:

• Create a profile. Already have a website, or offer services rather than physical products? Build a profile for discovery, then send people straight to your site, or list your services and let interested customers reach out to you directly. You can also use your profile to share resources, articles, or anything else your community should know about.

• Set up a store. Want to sell products without building and managing your own website? List and sell directly through Mainstreamed Marketplace. Customers will be buying directly from you, so you'll need a Stripe account to collect payment, and Mainstreamed Marketplace collects a 10% fee on transactions that happen through the site.

Contact & Support

Contact: Reach out to info@mainstreamedmarketplace.com for questions or to inquire about 1:1 onboarding.

Support Us: We're raising funds to help cover startup costs- check out our GoFundMe

Socials: Follow us @mainstreamedmarketplace on Instagram or @drewandlex on TikTok