Support Women and Use Maine’s First Directory of Women Owned Businesses
Women rock!
The CEI Women’s Business Center (WBC) has launched Maine Women’s Business List, the first public directory of women-owned businesses across Maine. It's free to use and easy to search. There are close to 200 businesses now on the list, from Portland to Ellsworth, from Bangor to Bremen, ...providing products and services as diverse as catering, crafts, photography, physical therapy, and more. All women-owned!
The Maine Women’s Business List seems like a perfect next step for the WBC and all the work they do to help women in Maine. They have two goals in getting the word out:
- to encourage consumers and corporates alike to purchase from companies owned by local women
- to encourage more women-owned businesses to sign up and be included.
The companies listed in the directory are searchable by geography, industry, or keyword. All entries are self-reported, and the WBC encourages any business headquartered in Maine which is also at least 50% female-owned, to register. This includes cis women, and also trans women, and femme/feminine-identifying genderqueers, and non-binary individuals.
The director of the CEI Women's Business Center, Sarah Guerette, says,
This directory is an important tool to help lift everyone working in Maine’s economy. We want this resource to make it easy to transact with woman-owned businesses in our state because their success will ripple throughout their workplaces, their families, and ultimately their communities. Our hope is that the Maine Women’s Business List will help increase the visibility of women in business in Maine, as well as help us understand them and their needs better.
When a business registers, they are prompted to answer a series of questions that will help contribute to much-needed data about the power of female entrepreneurship in Maine.
...providing products and services as diverse as catering, crafts, photography, physical therapy, and more. All women-owned!
The Maine Women’s Business List is a directory for anyone to use, but it's also designed to be used as a tool to help Maine’s female entrepreneurs connect with each other. Zara Bohan and Hillary Crowell have seen the power of such connections. Zara co-owns Coveside Coffee in Portland with her husband, Andrew. They held their first makers market in the Spring of 2021, where they connected with fellow List member, Hillary Crowell, of The Cultivated Thread, a Bath-based maker of beautiful handmade textiles. The pair now work together regularly.
If you are a woman who owns a Maine business or you know one, please visit Maine Women’s Business List and make this as strong as the women in Maine!
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