Big Cartel was founded in 2005 by Matt Wigham and Eric Turner in Salt Lake City. Wigham was managing bands and saw that musicians, artists, and other creatives needed a dead-simple way to sell merchandise online. They built Big Cartel to be the opposite of bloated enterprise platforms — minimal, focused, and affordable.
The platform is deliberately limited in scope. It handles product listings, payments, order management, and basic customization. There are no app stores, marketplace integrations, or advanced analytics dashboards. That’s the point — Big Cartel is for people selling a small catalog of handmade goods, prints, vinyl records, or clothing, not for merchants with thousands of SKUs.
Big Cartel’s free plan supports up to 5 products with no monthly fees and no transaction charges beyond payment processing costs. Paid plans top out at $19.99 per month for up to 500 products. The pricing model hasn’t changed dramatically in years, which is part of the appeal for cost-conscious creatives.
The company is intentionally small and has stayed independent. It hasn’t taken venture capital and doesn’t plan to. The team is about 30 people, mostly remote. Big Cartel has publicly committed to remaining a sustainable business rather than chasing growth-at-all-costs.
More than a million stores have been created on Big Cartel since launch. The platform processes hundreds of millions of dollars in sales annually, primarily for independent artists, screen printers, jewelry makers, ceramicists, and small fashion labels.
