Exploring Life & Business with Melissa Kohout and Sara Diederich of Local Undercover

Today we’d like to introduce you to Melissa Kohout and Sara Diederich.

Melissa and Sara, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We met back in 2014 while working at a Los Angeles arts organization where we shared a love of all things handmade; shopping, eating, and buying. In 2015, we started our own company called Jackalope Arts, whose mission is to create a unique curated shopping experience featuring the top trendsetting makers & designers of local goods. This merged our love to support the handmade community and background in event production. These pop-up events are hosted throughout the year in both California and Colorado- our respective home states.

At the beginning of 2020, in what would have been our sixth fair season, Covid-19 happened and quickly shut down businesses and issued stay-at-home orders across the world. Since in-person events could not happen, we began to think about what else could be done to help the local community and small businesses everywhere. Local Undercover was born.

Uncovering all things local, join us in meeting local businesses and sharing their stories from across the country. Exploring the best in handmade and small business. Our biggest new addition to this platform came at the beginning of 2021 when we created a robot virtual marketplace where shoppers can find handmade one-of-a-kind items year-round in a one-stop-shop.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Many of the building blocks that went into getting our virtual marketplace set up were a struggle. Learning many of the E-Commerce basics, like how to set up such a powerful website that can host editable dashboards for sellers, definitely was outside of our typical work. We really had to take time and learn a lot in order to put our site together.

Having a brand new site in the midst of Covid-19 has been an interesting time to launch. In ways, it’s been an amazing chance for the audience we already had in various states with Jackalope Arts, to shop from handmade artisans in other states. But, with so much online focus, it’s difficult to create a platform that really stands out when there are unlimited options out there.

As you know, we’re big fans of Local Undercover. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Just as our in-person Jackalope Arts events, our virtual marketplace on Local Undercover is highly curated featuring unique trendsetting goods from across the country. We offer free shipping so that you can purchase from numerous artisans at the same time and not accrue shipping charges for each purchase made.

We are also constantly adding new artists online. We extend the invite for artisans to join us on Local Undercover once they are a part of our in-person events. For instance, we have our Jackalope Indie Artisan Fair coming up on September 18th & 19th in Olde Town Arvada, and some of those makers are now joining us over on Local Undercover as well!

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Melissa, I was always into the arts, whether it was drawing, dancing, or decorating. I thought I was going to be an interior designer growing up, so I would redo my room all of the time and create floor plans and layouts constantly! However, my passion for event planning and type A personality changed my career direction and I got into event coordination. Now I get to combine my love of art and planning into one.

Sara, I started my first business in 7th grade, selling handmade scrunchies and clothing items to my schoolmates. I actually never created the items myself though — my friends did that part. I was our marketer, gathering orders and building our brand. I found my passion for behind-the-scenes work in business early on, and while “Zeal” didn’t make it past Junior High, my entrepreneurial spirit stayed alive.

Contact Info:

• Email: hello@localundercover.com
• Website: www.localundercover.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/localundercover
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/localundercover
• Other: shop.localundercover.com

Image Credits
Gil Riego Photography