Five Years, Three Towns, One Idea

Love Local Products has moved more times than most shops do in a decade. Here's where we've landed, and what stayed the same the whole way through.

On December 31, 2025, we closed the doors of the Hudson boutique. The building sold. That's the whole story, and it isn't a dramatic one, though it didn't feel that way at the time.

What I want to write about instead is the five years that came before it, and what the last eight months have made possible.

It started in Dorval

We opened in 2021, in a small space in Dorval. I was operating a little one person art studio, giving lessons and exhibiting my own artwork. Margaret told me of her concept for Love Local Products boutique and online store ... and it took off.

The idea was simple enough to fit on an index card: a shop where everything on the shelves was made by someone in this country, and where you could find out who that person was.

That turned out to be harder than it sounds. Plenty of products carry a maple leaf. Far fewer are actually made here, by people you can name, in towns you can point to on a map. Sorting one from the other became the work, and it still is.

Then Vankleek Hill. Then Hudson.

From a small Dorval shop in 2021 to an online marketplace of over 55 (and counting) Canadian makers. The story of Love Local Products, and what hasn't changed. We moved to Vankleek Hill, Ontario, and then to Hudson, Quebec. Two provinces, three storefronts, five years.

Each move brought new makers with it. Someone would come in with a box of soap or a set of cutting boards, and if the work was good and it was made here, it went on the shelf. That's roughly how the whole roster was built. We experimented with different brand additions over those years - but the ones that worked best were relationships built through conversations at the counter.

What the shelves couldn't hold

Here is the thing about a small boutique: the shelves end.

Every time I found a maker whose work belonged in the shop, I had to weigh it against what would have to come off the shelf to make room. Good work sometimes stayed on a list instead of in the store. That list got long.

Online, the list doesn't exist anymore. Love Local Products now carries over 55 Canadian makers in the new virtual marketplace, which is more than any of the three storefronts could have held at once. Makers from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, and every province in between. Potters, soap makers, food producers, woodworkers, people working out of home studios and small workshops and the occasional converted garage.

Every one of them is findable. Every collection tells you where the maker is and what they make.

How it works now

Love Local Products is a marketplace. When you order, your purchase goes to the maker who made it, and they ship it to you directly from their own studio or workshop. I don't warehouse anything, and nothing passes through a fulfillment centre. If you order soap from a maker in Nova Scotia and honey from someone in Quebec, both arrive from the hands that made them.

This isn't dropshipping, and the difference matters. A dropshipper doesn't know who's on the other end of the order. What I've given up is a stockroom. What I've kept is the part that was always the point: knowing exactly who made your thing, and being able to tell you.

What hasn't changed

Only Canadian makers and brands. It's a standard that takes maintenance. Over the past year I've been steadily reviewing anything that didn't meet it, including products from makers I liked personally. It isn't a comfortable process, but the promise only means something if it's enforced when it costs something.

Come look around

The new site is live. It's built to do the thing the storefront did best: let you find out who made the thing you're holding. New vendors are being added all the time. 

If you make something here

The roster is still open. I'm adding makers steadily. If you're a Canadian maker and your work belongs here, you can reach out to me through email or DM.  I look at everything that comes in.

Sign up to my weekly newsletter, and see the new makers for yourself and their special offers.

Five years, three towns, one idea. Still the same idea. More important than ever 🍁

— Nancy