Similarities: Shop Local & Faire

• Audience. Both serve the retail industry. In particular, both serve brands and retailers. Shop Local also services sales reps, and Faire tries to steer clear of them--which is one reason reps don't like Faire much.
• Delivery method. Both are online platforms.
• Service offered. Faire is a wholesale marketplace. It allows brands to sell and merchants (retailers) to buy. Shop Local also offers wholesale ordering services, but not in a marketplace format. For Shop Local, wholesale ordering is a very small part of our service's usage. Other services, such as an online store and gift registry, are what Shop Local is known for. Faire does not offer these services. Wholesale ordering is the only thing that Faire does.

Differences: Shop Local vs. Faire
Now, let's consider the differences:

• Shop Local gives a merchant (often a brick-and-mortar retailer) its own, standalone e-commerce store to sell goods. A merchant uses Shop Local to sell goods. It makes money by using Shop Local. Faire does not offer retailers or brands an e-commerce store to sell goods. A retailer does not sell goods on Faire; a store spends money on Faire. Due to this, if one were to compare to another service, Shop Local is more similar to Shopify.
• In addition to offering an online store, a retailer uses Shop Local for its marketing services, including gift registry software, review software, and news sharing.
• Shop Local helps a store compete with big-box stores and online players like Amazon and Zola. Faire does not offer notable marketing services to retailers and is not set up to help them compete online.
• Faire and Shop Local's approaches to wholesale ordering are different. Faire is a wholesale marketplace. Shop Local is not. A wholesale marketplace is when many brands pool all their products on one site and stores buy them. Shop Local does offer wholesale ordering, but not in a marketplace style. We send the store to the brand’s Shop Local and it buys the item at wholesale. It’s not a wholesale marketplace experience. For example, when you're on Beatriz Ball's Shop Local account, you can only buy Beatriz Ball at wholesale; you can't also buy 100 other brands at wholesale. You're in a "walled garden."
• Shop Local allows brands to Sync their products with authorized retailers. This marketing service, called Syncing, helps 110+ premium brands instantly show their 70,000 products in 1,400+ indie retailers' online stores. Each Synced product saves a store about $1 in website maintenance costs. Babcock Gifts in Memphis, TN, Syncs 37,000 products, helping it save $37,000 in website labor. Faire does not have a marketing platform like this.
• Shop Local allows brands and retailers to send each other 'tickets.' These tickets help members update products, archive products, load price lists, and more. This online system allows members to crowd-source product maintenance. Faire does not have this. Faire does not have a marketing platform like this.
• Faire does not offer product Syncing. Only Shop Local offers real-time product Syncing between brands and retailers. 
• As part of its e-commerce platform, Shop Local has a social network that connects members. Authorized retail members can easily find each other, message each other, share news, and share files. Faire does not have a social platform like this.
• In sum, Shop Local is a way to make money. Faire is a way to spend money.

About Shop Local
Learn more about Shop Local's Syncing service:
https://www.shoplocal.org/smart-products.cfm

Learn more about Shop Local's Wholesale Ordering service:
https://www.shoplocal.org/wholesale.cfm

About Faire
Learn more about Faire's services:
https://www.faire.com/support

You'll notice that if offers no e-commerce solution for stores. It recommends Shopify for that purpose.