Vegan Village

 

 

 

 

 

Running a vegan business can be tough and many are run on a shoestring budget with little money available for marketing. The internet brought with it an opportunity to give more marketing muscle to vegans and eleven years ago we set the Vegan Village up to do this.

The Vegan Village went live in September 1997. The listings included 44 organisations and monthly newsletters were sent out to help establish the Vegan Village and encourage people to get involved. In addition to the listings, there was a noticeboard for small ads, a newsdesk for press releases and news stories, and a recipe of the week to encourage people to visit the site regularly. Mini websites were offered at below cost price to help vegan businesses take their first steps on the net.

The Vegan Village was supported by an offline marketing campaign, including leaflets, regular press releases, full page adverts in The Vegan, a presence at Christmas Without Cruelty and sponsorship of the National Vegan Festival.

The Vegan Village was an immediate hit, winning the Vegan Society's Best New Vegan Product Award in 1998. It was runner up in BT's Innovation in E-commerce Awards soon after, and was voted Best Vegan Media/Publication 2007 in the Yaoh Vegan Environmental Awards.

The noticeboard has now run continuously for over ten years, during which time it has processed more than 5,000 free adverts and become one of the most popular vegan pages on the web. The recipe of the week feature ran for 2 years from 1998 to 2000, and the recipes from this now form the Recipe Book section of the website.

The Vegan Village is an ever-present in the Google rankings, is a recommended site on BBC Search, and remains the quickest, most cost-effective way for new vegan businesses to announce their presence to the marketplace.

You can visit the Vegan Village website live at www.veganvillage.co.uk.