Villej is a community brand for and by neurodivergent people, building community wealth through an online marketplace, community, and directory.
( Not sure what neurodivergence is about? We can help )
We create community wealth by combining our strengths using co-selling, cooperation, mutual aid, and microsolidarity techniques. The result of this is a marketplace where each person dedicates their efforts to only a part of the system, rather than exhaust themselves trying to run every part of a business themselves.
Villej can be considered a collection of projects working together to build a healthy ecosystem for ND people. A marketplace presides at the core, bolstered by a directory listing of businesses
Villej Admins network to find people who can together overcome the many challenges of building a marketplace where everybody gets paid fairly.
Villej Developers create and configure a Shopify store. They lower barriers to access with a technologically-informed onboarding program.
These forerunners of the project get business up and running, eventually forming a Workers Cooperative to ensure that business decisions are community-driven, and the growth of the enterprise disperses wealth rather than concentrates it.
A Creator makes a T-shirt design. They publish it on the Villej marketplace.
Once the design is shared, a Maker in our network directly prints it onto T-shirts for a product to sell.
A Merchant sets up a Shopify website, and they put in some information from Villej to connect to its marketplace. They think the T-shirt in stock rocks and add it to their shop.
An influencer leafs through the shop of a Merchant whose taste they appreciate, to find something their audience would dig. The T-shirt is a perfect fit. This influencer makes an Affiliate account in the Villej marketplace and gets a unique Affiliate link.
The influencer shares their link and gets the product out to the public. Somebody clicks that link, likes the T-shirt, and makes the purchase.
The marketplace recognizes who that affiliate link belongs to, and the Affiliate gets paid from the sale.
The Merchant gets paid directly by the customer.
The Maker gets paid by the merchant to ship the T-shirt. Or, if the Merchant pre-stocks rather than drop-ships, the Merchant pays the Maker to restock. Whoever has the shirt ships it to the buyer.
The Creator gets paid for creating the design. The get part of each sale of anything their design is on.
The Villej Workers Cooperative gets paid a platform fee for the purchase.
Admins get paid regularly by the coop for following up on transactions and handling customer service, and for growing the business overall.
Developers get paid regularly by the cooperative to continue powering up the marketplace and increase accessibility to the platform for neurodivergent people.
The best part is, we’re building these systems collaboratively, actively listening to everyone’s feedback, and refining the system over time to provide us something that non-neurodivergent-owned companies just don't grasp: accessibility and support.
As Villej grows, we will compile all the businesses with whom we work into a master directory. Here you'll find neurodivergent products & services. Let us know if you'd like to be added!
We are envisioning a marketplace that covers more than products, and lets ND people market their niche services. What if you could do one of these through the same marketplace where people buy physical items? We can set that up, and we're going to.
If you haven’t yet, please
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