a new way to live local

This is a guest post from Nadine Anheier Long of Shop Fauna. Scoutie Girl readers have an awesome opportunity to follow along as this business unfolds – and to help it grow!

The crew at Shop Fauna: Mia, Steve, Andrew, Nadine, and Lesley

A few weeks ago, my company, a startup think-tank called Red Nova Labs, announced a contest for employees. Based on the idea behind Startup Weekend, we were all asked to think of a business concept. We pitched to our co-workers, who voted on each idea, and the top 5 ideas were chosen. We’re now in the middle of a week set aside to develop these ideas.

Shop Fauna was born out of a love for my community in Kansas City and the principles that Scoutie Girl encourages, namely conscious spending and supporting creative people.

Shop Fauna helps you find the best independent businesses in your neighborhood. We’d love to create a community that supports the unique experience of shopping local and building connections with business owners. So many of the shops in my neighborhood bring color to my daily life, so this project is close to my heart.

Other awesome elements we’d like to add to the site: having local crafters who run home businesses list their specialty and contact information so that people in their area can find them, user photos of awesome purchases from local vendors, reviews, lists of the best places to go, and video tours of stores, because nothing on the internet matches the feeling you get when you visit a beautiful, well-crafted store.

Right now, we’re working on our business model, site design, and building a user base. I would love for Scoutie Girl users to join in the fun by going to Shop Fauna’s homepage and simply signing up to show that you’d be interested in this kind of site. The more potential users we have, the better chance we have of getting to move forward with this idea.

You can also follow our progress by following us on twitter or at our team blog on tumblr.