One thousand, five hundred and eighty jobs. $26 million in annual revenue. Over a million square feet of production space.
That was the Made In Baltimore footprint here in Baltimore City, as of June 2019. And the results of last year’s member survey were clear: growing industries, booming business, and a budding community of Baltimore’s entrepreneurs. Of course, a lot has changed since last June, for us here at Made In Baltimore and around the world. With our second annual member survey, we hope to get a better picture of the shifts in our network, as well as a better understanding of our members’ needs.
TO TAKE OUR SECOND ANNUAL MEMBER SURVEY, CLICK THIS LINK.
We’re so excited to roll out our second annual member survey. We ask that all of our members complete this survey, which should take about five to 10 minutes, as soon as possible.
From last year’s first annual member survey:
We’ve all spent more time at home in the past few months than we expected. Many of our makers may have made adjustments, converting their living rooms into production spaces, but many others were already used to working from home. While 50% of respondents to last year’s survey indicated that they would need more space, we don’t know how many of our members have expanded into new facilities, and how many may have been forced to downsize. Our second annual member survey will help us better understand the pandemic’s impact on accessible space and guide our ongoing efforts to make light manufacturing space in Baltimore more readily available to the waiting creative business community.
Made In Baltimore strives to foster economic growth in Baltimore from the ground up, and to do so we must reckon with the history and ongoing dynamics of race in our city. We want our membership to reflect the demographics of Baltimore City, and highlight the entrepreneurial strength in our communities of color. More importantly, we want to make sure we are alert to the needs of our members of all races. Our second annual member survey will be an important measure of how our demographic breakdown shifted as we welcomed dozens of new businesses in the last year. It is also an opportunity for us to aggregate feedback from our members, including how we can better support makers and business owners of color.
There’s no doubt that Baltimore, like the rest of the country, felt the sharp job loss and economic shutdown brought on by the pandemic. At the moment, though, we don’t have a clear picture of the extent to which this impacted our network. In last year’s survey, 90% of our members anticipated growth. We know that several members who adapted their operations to production of personal protective equipment have been able to bring on new hires, but we worry that much of the anticipated growth has been put on pause. Our second annual member survey will help us understand changes to the jobs our network represents, and consider how we can continue bringing more growth opportunities to our member businesses.
Thanks for reading! We at Made In Baltimore are focused on responding effectively to the needs of our members. As part of that effort, we want to share more amazing stories from our members to our network of customers, local collaborators and small business super fans! If you’ve got a story tip for us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!