Our Story

In 1999, our founder, Dave Bolotsky, visited a craft exhibit and used to be stimulated to construct some thing that had in no way existed before: an on line marketplace to join makers and their creations with customers searching for actually special goods.

Over the final 25 years, we’ve grown to about a hundred and fifty year-round crew individuals with heaps of programs heading from our domestic in Brooklyn to clients throughout the united states of america every day.

Our Products

Our series has grown from Dave’s craft exhibit finds to heaps of designs handpicked through our shopping for team, who search all yr for unique items from round the world. We additionally find out special portions thru on-line submissions from our neighborhood of artists and designers. Thanks to our in-house product improvement team, we create our very own goods, too.

Every diagram we lift accommodates factors of creativity. We seem to be for items that:

Serve a purpose

Solve a problem

Stun us with their beauty

Are handmade with incredible craft and skill

Use unusual, reclaimed, or recycled materials

Are made barring leather, feathers, or fur

Make us wonder, “Why hasn’t all of us notion of this before?”

Our Makers

The story at the back of a product things to us. We desire to understand how it is made, who’s making it, and the technique that leads to the completed design. From potters to painters to rings artists to craftspeople of all kinds, we have labored with thousands of makers over the years. We’re proud to provide impartial designers a vicinity to exhibit their work.

Force For Good
never ever: fur feathers leather
recyclingEnvironmentally Conscious

We use, and inspire our artists to use, recycled or sustainable substances every time possible.

We pick out environmentally friendlier packing materials.

Our catalog is printed on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) licensed paper.

Our merchandise have continually been leather, feather, and fur-free.

big hearts open minds
back_handGiving Back

We companion with non-profit companies via our Better to Give program. With each buy you make, we’re proud to donate $1 to a associate of your preference ($2 for Perks members).

Since launching Better to Give in 2001, we have donated greater than three million greenbacks to reasons we care about.

Through our Better to Give program, we have helped guide important agencies inclusive of American Forests, International Rescue Committee, and God’s Love We Deliver,. Learn extra about them here.

people, planet, profit.
favoritePeople First

Starting pay for hourly group contributors is extra than double the federal minimal wage.

We consider in honest paid household leave. We provide it to our new mother and father and these on our crew caring for ill cherished ones.

We have correctly endorsed for paid household go away and a greater minimal wage in New York State, and proceed to assist these efforts in different states.

Founding B Corporation

In 2007, we grew to be a founding member of an alliance of groups dedicated to the use of commercial enterprise as a pressure for good. By passing an in-depth screening, we formally grew to become one of the first B Corporations. We’re pushed to always consider and enhance ourselves, whilst spreading the phrase about certification. To date, greater than 8,500 businesses along with Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, Allbirds, and King Arthur Baking Company have joined the B Corp community.

You shop, we give.
Over $3M donated—and counting.

As an independently owned business, we have the freedom to aid motives we accept as true with in and to affect the world in a fantastic way. Giving again is essential to us and we choose to share that ardour with you. Through our Better to Give program, we’ve been capable to construct a higher commercial enterprise by way of connecting clients with nonprofit businesses throughout the globe. With each and every buy you make, we’re proud to donate $1 to a Better to Give associate of your desire ($2 for Perks members).

Since we started out the Better to Give application in 2001, we’ve donated over $3,000,000. Thank you for supporting us do our section to assist our planet and the human beings who stay on it.

Everyone is welcome here

At Uncommon Goods, we trust we’re all out of the ordinary. That’s why we’re dedicated to making diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging section of the entirety we do. We try to make huge adjustments to our business, from how we locate our merchandise to how we construct and domesticate our team, so we can be everyone’s preferred region to work.
On the Brooklyn waterfront

We’re positioned on the Sunset Park waterfront in Brooklyn, NY, proper at a NYC ferry stop. Until March, 2020, all of our operations have been housed collectively in the historical Brooklyn Army Terminal. Since then, we have supplied flexible, far off or hybrid work picks for many crew members. Photo credit: AGENCIE Group
What we offer
Benefits

We make investments in your well-being via sponsored medical, dental, and imaginative and prescient insurance; in your profession with free, confidential, 1-on-1 coaching; and in your future by 401K matching. You can even make investments in our future thru worker inventory options.

Transparency in Coverage (TIC) Machine Readable Files
Education subsidy

We reimburse up to $5250 (the each year IRS limit) of lessons for university coursework or expert training.
Service

We provide eight hours of paid time off every yr for volunteering.
Commuter benefits

We provide a pretax bargain for these who take public transportation (train, bus, and ferry). For these who select to pedal to work, we provide extensively discounted each year Citi Bike memberships and/or will furnish cash to assist with buy or restore of your very own bike.
Team member discounts

Our crew contributors can purchase our items at a 40% bargain (and take our Uncommon Experience lessons free).
Work/life balance

We provide beneficiant paid time off, and we complement New York State Short Term Disability for three weeks and New York State Paid Family Leave for eight weeks.
Casual environment

No want to gown up: put on cosy garments each and every day. And we keep occasional, fun, company-wide events.
Open e book policy

We share our economic outcomes with the whole group each and every week in our administration replace e mail and periodically in our biweekly company-wide meeting, UncommonCo.
Collaborative environment

Whether it is a facts analyst recommending merchandise to the customers or a warehouse supervisor presenting the theme for an e-mail blast, we welcome your abilities and insight, anyplace they apply.

Our Products

We’re passionate about innovative product design, so earlier than bringing every new object into our assortment we make it a factor to ask: “What makes this an unique good?”

Truly Uncommon Designs

The first section of that reply is easy. Every advent we lift comprises an issue of creativity. Truly wonderful items meet this purpose in extra approaches than one. We’re on the lookout for designs that serve a purpose, resolve a problem, stun us with their beauty, or make us surprise why no one concept of it before.

We’re additionally proud to provide merchandise that are handmade with impeccable craftsmanship and that are made from interesting, unusual, reclaimed, or recycled materials. While we welcome clean designs with excellent substances tales we do not lift merchandise made with fur, feathers, leather, or pearls.
people in the back of our products
People at the back of Our Products

Our customers do not simply consider new items primarily based on substances and function. They additionally take a deeper seem at the place every layout comes from. We’re involved in how it is made, who’s making it, and the technique that leads to the completed product.

We proudly lift thousands of handmade pieces, however some of our merchandise are manufactured. Our group appears at new items from many angles, and once in a while we figure out to elevate some thing due to the fact it is sincerely unique, even if it is not bodily assembled by using character artists. Many of our portions begin out as thoughts in the minds of notable designers and go thru manufacturing earlier than touchdown with us. Others are cautiously crafted via hand—whether it is through a collective of artisans in the US or abroad, a fashion designer working with a group of assistants, or by using a single artist painstakingly growing every piece.

Some of the humans at the back of our merchandise are proper here, on our Product Development team. Our crew is usually working to strengthen modern designs and to structure partnerships with the producers, artists, and designers that assist us make new distinct goods.
getting the goods
Getting the Goods

As we work to develop our assortment of merchandise designed in-house, we’re additionally making positive to stability our personal designs with merchandise from round the world.

When our shopping for group isn’t always journeying the United States touring alternate shows, they’re scouring the net searching for new stuff. They’re looking out blogs, crowdbacking sites, artists’ portfolios, and different nooks and crannies of the web to locate our subsequent high-quality sellers.

Many authentic portions get found through our buyers, who appear for the whole thing from rings and accessories, to kid’s apparel and toys, to artwork and domestic décor—to the whole thing else uncommon! But in some cases, high-quality merchandise simply come to us. Artists are welcome to post their work for consideration thru our on-line shape at any time.
growing assortment, developing community
Growing Assortment, Growing Community

With each and every new advent we encounter, we proceed to consider our merchandise to make positive they meet our distinguished criteria. Whether the today’s exotic appropriate is developed by using our group with the assist of one of the many artists we work with, determined by using the eager eye of a member of our shopping for team, or submitted thru our on-line form, we be aware of that promoting the completed product is solely one step in persevering with to construct a magnificent assortment.

We’re devoted to carrying the most special merchandise out there, however we’re solely as profitable as our artists and designers. We comprehend that we cannot deliver the first-rate designs to our clients barring a robust community of humans to create them—so we are going to by no means quit helping the human beings at the back of our products, even as our assortment continues to grow.