First of all both Tresstle and Peddle are owned and run by the same person Nicki Capewell. They are sister companies providing the same service - a platform for artisan makers to sell their work. Many makers will join both platforms (paying two sets of fees) not knowing this. But even if you joined Tresstle only, there are also events organised by Peddle on Tresstle platform, meaning that as a maker you already paid Tresstle a joining fee and now you will also pay a fee to Peddle as an organiser of a particular event. So you paid the same person twice. Is it only me or is it a bit fishy?
Or am I getting this completely wrong?
Also, it looks to me that neither platform advertise their services to reach broader audience beyond those who already know about Tresstle/Peddle either as sellers or buyers. They rely on the sellers themselves to advertise for them. I just Googled their latest Ukraine Appeal Online Charity Market and it doesn’t show or come up anywhere in my search. So a normal person as a potential buyer will not find this event unless they Google Tresstle or Peddle… and they obviously won’t because nobody knows these platforms.
Have any of you on Folksy used these platforms and what was your experience?
Thanks!
check out this - Folksy - Pedddle x Folksy Market on Folksy
but I like you feel that Peddle don’t promote the events. I’ve never heard of them apart from the folksy markets and that’s only because folksy mention them.
Hi! 
I’ve used Tresstle - I signed up at the start when they had an offer to join for the one-off price of £5.00 (I believe the fee is now £10.00).
I took part in two events - Just a Card Visibility Fair and Folksy Local North West Christmas market. I’m not planning to take part in any more events at this time.
I haven’t joined Peddle as I understand that is for makers who take part in physical market stalls.
I didn’t realise the events did not show up on Google - thank you for highlighting that 
Pedddle was set up for physical markets - you could use it to find markets local to you or markets could find stallholders in there area. Then the pandemic hit and physical markets couldn’t happen so Nikki developed Tresstle as a way of providing virtual markets with a landing page so you could see all the stall holders in the same place (virtual markets in the early days of the pandemic were a bit of a chaotic affair and I did some where I never knew who the other stall holders were it was just lots of people on instagram using the same hashtag).
I joined Tresstle so I could do the Folksy Christmas market, the marketing was done by Folksy and the stallholders, tresstle’s involvement was to provide the market landing page and a certain amount of useful to the organisers behind the scenes stuff (we could manage applications, easily see who hadn’t paid, who hadn’t set up their profile correctly, a place to put promotional graphics where everyone could find them). Tresstle wasn’t being paid to promote the event just host the web page.
When my annual membership of Tresstle runs out I won’t be renewing but that is a reflection of the fact that virtual markets don’t work for me so I won’t be doing anymore rather than anything specific about Tresstle. I’ve never felt the need to join Pedddle.
Hi Sasha, Peddle might have been set up to run physical markets, but currently also organises virtual ones and runs them on Tresstle platform as a specific event organiser. So if you were to join Trestle as an individual maker and pay the initial joining fee, and then there’s an event organised by Peddle (who essentially is the same company) and you want to join that event, you will then pay a fee to Peddle, too. So you paid twice to the same company/person without knowing. I certainly didn’t know this until today.
Yes 2 payments are being made and are ultimately ending up with the same person but they are covering different aspects of the virtual market. When we did the Folksy christmas market on tresstle, you had to pay to become a member of tresstle but you also had to pay an event fee to Folksy to be included in the market. The specific event fee, whether it is paid to peddle or Folksy or Handmade hour (who have events coming later on in the year), is to cover promotion of the event.
I guess so long as she gets buyers to the market I don’t see the problem with her using the best bits of each platform (peddle’s social media reach, tresstle’s market interface) to run an event.
I applied to Peddle when it was just Pedddle. Got turned down but no reason why so asked but got no reply. Camilla spoke to Pedddle who said they could not find my question as to why I was turned down.
This made me feel as if I was lying which I was not. Still not given a reason even at that point. Hence why I would not touch them with a barge pole.
Tbh we could organise our own online event on a fb page and send invitations to our followers as a collective. Costing nothing but a bit of time and effort. Once an event is created easy to share to all your followers and advertise on Instagram.
I understand you pay the platform separately and the organiser of an event separately, I don’t have a problem with that when they are two separate companies. It’s ok that I pay Tresstle to join the platform and Folksy to run an event. But if it’s the same company under two different names running both the platform and the event, and as their customer I don’t know about it, then I’m not ok with it. Transparency is vital, in my opinion, otherwise the trust goes. Why not be transparent about who you are and that you run these two companies as sister companies? Have I known this when I joined I might have not minded and, like you, think it’s ok. But I didn’t know (and I doubt that many of their other customers do) and for me that’s not ok. Does Folksy know? Everyone, of course is entitled to a different opinion, but only if they know all the facts. And it feels like those facts are not out there for everyone to know.
Yes, that’s true and a great idea. I would be up for that.
Yes Folksy knows that Nicki runs both Pedddle and Tresstle. They did a virtual market with Pedddle before Tresstle was set up and have done subsequent virtual markets on Tresstle. Nicki has been included in zoom calls when organising markets and I think she helped write the blog article on virtual markets.
The about us page on Tresstle does state that Nicki runs both Tresstle and Peddle.
Hi Sasha, yes that’s true. But the About page on Peddle doesn’t say it and that’s where I looked. I’m just saying, as a new joiner, I din’t know and was surprised when I found out. Both Peddle and Tresstle teams contacted me via email about events to join and neither mentioned they’re related. I first joined Tresstle and then was contacted by Peddle and was wondering who they were. And it should be the first piece of information to someone completely new - hi, thank you for joining, we also run a sister company called Peddle. I am new to Folksy, too so I wouldn’t have taken part in the Zoom calls you mentioned. This is all from a perspective of a new joiner. It just lacks transparency.
That’s interesting and thanks Natalia for explaining the link between the two organisations. I’ve always been confused by how similar the two names are and now it makes sense. I applied to join one of them and got turned down so have never bothered with the other. I decided that since Folksy describes itself as an online market place why bother paying to join another one.
Hi ya,
There is currently an ongoing event for this month on FB for Folksy sellers run by @happyapplecrafts (sorry can’t seem to tag here). This should be the link to it if you’re insterested Virtual April Market 2022 | Facebook
Cheers Lou
Just to add to your comment Lou, this market has been running for about 6 months now and changes its name to match each month.
That’s exactly what I thought, too, thanks for replying.
thank you very much, will have a look.
Hi Natalia. Nicki does run both Pedddle and Tresstle - and I don’t think she has ever tried to hide this. We’ve always found her extremely committed to supporting makers and small businesses, and we’ve seen how hard she has worked to support stallholders at events we’ve run.
Pedddle is a directory of physical (in-person) markets that helps visitors find local craft fairs and reconnect with stallholders. It can also help stallholders find and contact organisers too. Pedddle doesn’t run any physical markets. It isn’t an ecommerce platform like Folksy, and it allows members to link to their Folksy listings directly.
During Covid, Nicki wanted to support her stallholder members when in-person events weren’t running, and so she started running online markets on the Pedddle website. Once physical markets opened up again, Nicki needed to move the online aspect away from Pedddle to avoid confusion, as users were starting to think that Pedddle was an online event hosting website, rather than a directory of physical markets.
This is why she set up Tresstle: as a platform solely used to host online events and markets.
We’ve used Tresstle to run our Folksy Local Markets last Christmas and we’re also hosting our Folksy Spring Market on there, as feedback from our stallholders last time was that it was easy and straightforward to use.
In terms of fees, you do pay a one-off registration payment to Tresstle to cover their admin fees. Once you’ve done that, you can apply to any markets hosted on there. Then, when you’ve been accepted to an event, you pay the fee set by the organiser to take part. That payment goes to the organiser (ie. Folksy).
Although the Tresstle team do support stallholders and organisers with tech queries, they are not responsible for marketing any events hosted on their platform. That’s our responsibility as event organisers. In my experience, Pedddle do usually list these events on their website to help them get more exposure, but they’re not paid to do that by the event organisers, and as an organiser ourselves we don’t expect that.
We’ve run several online markets now, initially on Pedddle and then on Tresstle, and in each one Nicki and her team have been a joy to work with - helping advise us on how to set up the events, being on hand to answer all our questions, and even hosting free Q&As for our stallholders.
In terms of marketing and brand awareness, I am aware that they run outreach via paid adverts each month, and that their events are listed on Google, but as with any SEO, a web page takes 3-6 months to become established and work its way up the ranking.
In my experience, Nicki genuinely wants to support makers in the best possible way - which is why she set up first Pedddle and then Tresstle, and we’re really grateful that she did 
Thank you Camilla. When I joined Folksy I didn’t know about either of the platforms and then Tresstle was introduced to me by Folksy because of the Spring Market. So when I then received an email that looked like from Tresstle, but was called Peddle calling to join the Ukraine support Market this looked really strange particularly that Peddle was organising the event on Tresstle - you can understand why this can look a bit strange to someone who is new to all of this and doesn’t know the background. I’m not trying to be difficult, just pointing out what my initial reaction was. From a point of view of a seller I already joined Folksy, then almost immediately was introduced to Tresstle and then was prompted to join Peddle… that’s three platforms my money was potentially going out to so I needed to know more.
Thanks for explaining it all, I’m sure other new sellers will find the information very useful. 