Our Story

We are community creators.
We are champions of creativity.
We are courageous creatives.

The Finders Keepers is where communities come together to shop, explore and discover the very best from designers, makers and entrepreneurs in our country.

 
 

The Finders Keepers was founded in 2008 by pals Sarah Thornton and Brooke Johnston and has grown from a humble side hustle to become Australia's leading design marketplace.

We host market events in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane each year and launched an Online Marketplace in 2019 as a new platform for Australian makers and designers to share their wares. In 2022, the team was proud to launch their first Creative Business Summit, mindfully made just for small and micro creative businesses. Our commitment has and always will be to community, conscious shopping, mindful making and courage in creativity.

At the very heart of everything we do, we seek to connect, inspire and empower the creative community.

As a small business ourselves, we are proud to support thousands of other small and micro independent creative businesses in Australia. Through our markets and events we are proud to empower makers and creatives all over Australia to make a living doing what they love.

In 2023, we can't wait to bring all our market events back to life , giving our loyal market fans the chance to shop, explore, discover and connect with our creative stallholder community once again. Our events continue to promote conscious consumerism and actively support small, local businesses.

We've been supporting small since 2008!

$1 million

Average spent by market-goers each year supporting independent creative businesses.

2,600+

Small creative Australian businesses supported by us each year.

From side hustle to industry leaders.

The Finders Keepers was founded in the summer of 2008 in Sydney, by young designers and friends, Brooke Johnston and Sarah Thornton. They both now live and work in the beautiful Northern Rivers of NSW.

The aim for Brooke and Sarah was simple: to create a marketplace that was a supportive environment for like-minded, independent designers to sell their work. Brooke and Sarah bucked the markets trend with a vision of an event that didn't exist at the time; somewhere they wanted to shop, which also happened to combine everything they loved under one roof.

The Finders Keepers continued to evolve and innovate, expanding to multiple cities,  Brisbane in 2009, and Melbourne in 2010. We've continued to grow out of smaller venues, and spread our wings from two-day to three-day market events. We introduced an Indigenous Program in 2018 to elevate First Nations designers and makers, launched a bespoke Online Marketplace e-commerce platform in 2019, survived a global pandemic and then went on to create a Summit in 2022 to empower small creative business owners.

Want more?

You can hear all about The Finders Keepers Founders Story on the One Wild Ride podcast here.

Follow The Finders Keepers' journey on Instagram and Facebook or sign up to our mailing list to see what's next, and you can meet our passionate team here!

MARKETS CREATIVE BUSINESS SUMMIT