MAKER’S ROW, an online marketplace that connects American manufacturers with small, medium-sized, and product-based businesses, is changing the face of manufacturing. Now women — who make up 65% of the Maker’s Row online community — are innovating in an industry that has widely been considered male-dominated.

The idea for Maker’s Row came about like many other startups do — entrepreneurs Matthew Burnett and Tanya Menendez found a simple solution to a complicated problem. Burnett was having trouble finding an affordable and reliable domestic manufacturer for his watch company. He wanted to find a way to make the manufacturing process simple to understand and easy to access. With the help of Menendez, then an analyst at Goldman Sachs, the idea for Maker’s Row was born.

With this idea came the need for investors. The two met William Crowder, Venture Advisor for Comcast’s Catalyst Fund, at a LATISM (Latinas in Social Media) event at SXSW in 2015. Maker’s Row stood out to Crowder as a unique idea for an innovative company with a clear focus on diversity.

In return, Burnett and Menendez saw the value a company like Comcast could bring to their startup.

"We are looking to change the face of manufacturing," said Menendez. "Comcast is a true strategic partner for us because they understand the manufacturing industry. We were finding that this wasn’t something many investors fully understood."

Maker’s Row aims to have a workforce that reflects the diversity of its customers, an objective that is also important to Comcast. In addition to a large number of women business owners, over 28% of the online community that Maker’s Row serves identify as African American, Hispanic, or Asian American. Maker’s Row is able to appeal to a much more diverse group of entrepreneurs because the barrier to entry for first-time entrepreneurs is much lower than before.

"Democratizing manufacturing means that people with access to the Internet can now create products,” Burnett said. “Our site has become a great equalizer for an industry that has historically had a very high barrier to entry."

One product that Maker’s Row is especially proud of is Lotsa Brave People, created by female entrepreneur Cary Hanosek. Hanosek’s daughter was diagnosed with a rare kind of epilepsy and undergoes weekly infusions. Because Hanosek knew this would be a life-long disease, she wanted to find a way to keep her daughter from always feeling like a patient. She created comfortable clothing to allow for tubing management and key access points, so that nurses and medical providers could easily administer treatment. As a first-time entrepreneur, Hanosek would not have had easy access to a manufacturer without Marker’s Row. Comcast is proud to invest in a company that makes it simple for people like Hanosek to pursue their dreams and make other people’s lives better. 

Pictured Above: Matthew Burnett and Tanya Menendez, co-founders of Maker's Row.