How Barnsley Indoor Market is adapting to the new retail reality

As local shops, businesses and markets begin to open, we are seeing encouraging signs of resilience, with small business owners innovating and turning to new methods of connecting with their customers so that they continue trading. Through Visa’s partnership with ShopAppy.com, an ecommerce platform that enables small businesses to showcase and sell products or services online, we’ve seen how one market town in the UK is leading the way in adapting their businesses to reach consumers online.

Barnsley Indoor Market is home to 80 different traders, including everything from fishmongers to butchers to cheese delicatessens. Maria Cotton has been working for Barnsley Council as Market and Town Centre Manager for four years and, through the early adoption of ShopAppy and click and collect services, has helped traders continue selling their goods to local customers.

For Maria, the 'virtual high street' element to ShopAppy.com has been essential during these challenging times, as social distancing measures meant that the market had to temporarily close. The platform has provided them a one-stop shop for everything that the market traders have to offer and, as a result, customer numbers have soared as locals rush to ensure they can still shop at their favourite stores. In fact, for Barnsley Indoor Market, the integration of ShopAppy.com has meant that more stores can be involved in trading than can fit in the physical market.

Barnsley, like many other business communities around the UK, has shown its willingness to unite and adapt to provide a better offering for their local community, now and for the long term.

Through our Where You Shop Matters campaign, Visa is proud to champion these small business success stories, sharing the new, savvy ways of how small businesses are innovating and succeeding, while helping them to continue to thrive in the future.

Visa is proud to support the UK Government’s campaign to ‘Enjoy Summer Safely’ and is getting behind local businesses as they begin to re-open. By choosing to support local businesses, online or offline, we can all do our bit to help our communities recover.