BIRMINGHAM, Mich. — In her mid-20s, Belle Meador found a love of crafting handmade greeting cards with her aunt and started selling them locally on social media.
What started as a hobby blossomed into a microbusiness for the young woman on the autism spectrum whose neurological disorder affects her ability to communicate and work full-time in traditional settings.
But autism doesn’t affect her ability to make greeting cards for Hanukkah, Christmas, retirements, newborn babies and the Chinese New Year, or turn other forms of art into items people might want to purchase.
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That skillset got her father, Dave Meador, a retired DTE Energy Co. executive, thinking about how Belle could market the items she makes to a wider audience of potential customers beyond the front-porch transactions on Facebook Marketplace.
Backed by nearly $2 million in seed capital, including $350,000 of his family’s money, Dave Meador is launching a not-for-profit, Etsy-like e-commerce website for sellers with disabilities who make items ranging from jewelry and Christmas tree ornaments to personalized tumblers.
Meador’s now 30-year-old daughter is one of the first makers whose greeting cards and custom-made jars of slime were for sale when TroveMarket.com goes went live for buyers on Thanksgiving Day.
Trove Market will charge its sellers a 3% commission fee for selling products on the platform, while the fees charged by for-profit e-commerce giants like Etsy, eBay and Meta’s Facebook can climb into the neighborhood of 30%, depending on the item and the stack of fees.
“It’s a minimal fee structure, and it was designed that way because of the community we’re trying to help,” said Meador, a former vice chairman of DTE Energy who has spent years tackling workforce challenges in Detroit.
The statistics are particularly dreary for people with developmental disabilities getting jobs and maintaining gainful employment. The Autism Society of America estimates the unemployment rate for adults on the autism spectrum to be as high as 85%.
Trove Market was incorporated as a 501(c)3 charity under the Internal Revenue Service code, so its sellers are limited to annual earnings of 250% of the federal poverty level or $39,125. That constrains who can sell their products on Trove Market, Meador said.
“Their argument was, ‘Dave, you’re trying to help people with disabilities and poverty. So we’d like to see both of those as a requirement,’” Meador said of the IRS.
A pathway for people with disabilities
Meador and the backers of his new not-for-profit venture (including his former employer) see the e-commerce business model of Trove Market as a pathway for people with disabilities to gain a foothold in the economy with a microbusiness that can supplement their income.
Across Michigan, numerous programs put individuals with developmental and physical disabilities to work, but the products they make are usually sold locally, said Jayme Powell, the new CEO of Trove Market.
Powell joined Meador’s venture from the Detroit Regional Workforce Partnership, an initiative of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and a regional group of corporate executives that Meador leads.
For Powell, she personally connected with the mission of Trove Market. She has a 38-year-old sister, Brittany Danzig, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a developmental disability on the autism spectrum that affects her ability to communicate with others. Danzig is a seller on Trove, making custom plastic holders for business and playing cards.
“This was a personal mission for me to take my knowledge and background and apply it in a way where I feel very personally motivated to support people like my sister,” Powell said.
Powell is working to form partnerships with existing programs for adults with disabilities and with high schools that include craftmaking in their curricula, giving students a platform to sell their goods.
“There’s no reason why every high school special education department in Michigan couldn’t have a storefront on Trove,” said Meador, who previously co-chaired Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s workforce development board.
Meador, who is now chair of Trove Market’s board after Powell was hired as CEO, said the organization has plans to expand beyond its current IRS income eligibility restrictions.
“What we’re finding is that there are people with disabilities who have started businesses and employ other people with disabilities, and we want to make sure they’re included,” he said.
Meador acknowledged he’s been on a winding e-commerce learning curve as he’s launched Trove Market. He spent most of his career in the energy sector, holding C-suite titles of chief administrative officer, chief financial officer, controller and treasurer of a multibillion-dollar electricity and gas company.
“I’m learning a lot about starting an e-commerce business. And if you talk to people about that, they would tell you the constraint is always your supply,” Meador said.
In search of makers
But before they set their eyes on expansion, Trove Market has to gain its own foothold in the market.
Trove Market’s backers believe the e-commerce platform will have immediate appeal to buyers, particularly younger, socially conscious customers.
The e-commerce platform’s name is meant to convey to buyers that there’s a treasure trove of talent among people with disabilities, Powell said.
“Purchasing with a purpose, generationally, has become more and more important, and people want to do good with their dollar,” Powell said.
The challenge, Meador and Powell said, has been signing up sellers, helping people get onto the platform, and acclimating them to fulfilling orders and running a small business.
Those challenges include the fact that some people with disabilities don’t have bank accounts, making the transfer of payments difficult or requiring the involvement of a legal guardian, Meador said.
“We desperately need to get product, because I don’t think it will be a problem getting buyers. People want to support a good cause,” said Colleen Allen, CEO of the Autism Alliance of Michigan.
Allen has been involved in the Trove Market, which started as a project at the Autism Alliance, where Meador has been a longtime board member.
“I was as skeptical as the next person,” Allen said. “It really is all about awareness.”
To be successful, Allen said, the Trove Market needs to tap into a kind of underground economy of makers whose products might show up at local farmers’ markets or craft shows a few times a year.
At a recent work conference, Allen said she met a man with autism who was selling “beautiful” artwork.
“He said, ‘Yeah, I have a whole basement full (of art),’” she recalled.
“Like, let’s get them on the platform,” Allen replied.
“We gotta get (the product) out of basements and onto the platform so it can draw the buyers and make everybody successful,” she added.
‘You should sell those’
After Belle Meador graduated from high school, she worked for Strategic Staffing Solutions in Detroit before taking a job at English Gardens in Royal Oak, where she’s worked two days a week for about six years, her father said.
“It gave me a firsthand look at just how hard it is for people with disabilities and autism to find work,” Dave Meador said.
She lives independently now in her own house in Birmingham, using Uber to get around because she cannot drive. About four years ago, Belle started making greeting cards with her aunt, Kathy Norris, who told her niece she had a talent that could be a way to make money.
“She was like, ‘You know, you should sell those,’” Belle said of her aunt’s feedback on her greeting card artistry.
Buyers have never been a problem. Belle’s creativity and designs underscored her talent.
“Some days they couldn’t keep up with some of the orders that were coming in,” Dave Meador said.
Belle started making themed slime jars because she liked experimenting with different smells and textures — sensory characteristics that made them different than run-of-the-mill household slime made from mixing glue, borax and saline solution.
“My favorite part of this is the smell and glossy (texture),” Belle said as she took a sniff of a reddish creation she calls, “Dragon’s Blood.”
Belle said she gets a lot of her inspiration from trends she sees on YouTube or broader popular culture. She is an avid fan of comic book and anime conventions, dressing up daily to attend the annual Motor City Comic Con and Youmacon gatherings in Detroit.
Some of Belle’s slime jars in her Trove Market store feature an Axolotl charm, following a recent craze among kids obsessed with a salamander that can breathe underwater with tiny gills protruding from its head like dreadlocks.
In Belle’s Birmingham home, which has become the headquarters of her Trove Market business, she has an entire bedroom dedicated to making slime.
Down the hall, she has the inspiration for some of her creations — an actual Axolotl living in an aquarium that devours bloodworms.
“It’s gonna be really interesting when this goes live, because Belle tells me that kids are having oxala parties and slime parties,” Dave Meador said. “OK, get them the material.”
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