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Main Street Mavericks started as a pipe dream. What if we could take our love of small businesses on the road to meet and hear from REAL small business owners? Would they want to meet with us? What advice would they have for us? Could we be of any help to them?

On day one of Main Street Mavericks, Nina Murphy’s SE Portland sake shop was stop four on a road trip around Oregon to meet small business owners. Nestled just one block away from the eastside waterfront, Sunflower Sake is a sake shop and tasting room.

Amanda Siska of Bread & Badger welcomed the Main Street Mavericks to her SE Portland home and art studio on day one of our tour to meet Oregon small business owners.

When William Lay first met with a small business coach to discuss his idea for a size-inclusive gym in Portland, Oregon, the coach laughed at him. But Lay was dead serious. He wanted to own a gym that felt comfortable for people of all body types, and All Bodies Strong — Portland’s first gym for larger-bodies — is going strong. As Lay advised, “Ignore the naysayers.”

Merchant Maverick first met Edith Johnson (Edie to her friends and bookstore patrons) in the summer of 2023. She was the recipient of Merchant Maverick’s grant for Portland-owned businesses — she had recently decided to expand her bookstore pop-up into a brick-and-mortar location in NE Portland, Oregon.

Making sure your point of sale software is safe and secure is an important part of running a small business. Even a small breach can damage the trust of your customer base and, if you’re already running on tight margins, any monetary loss could put you in a significant bind. With that said, any good POS system will have strong built-in measures to keep your valuable information safe.

Co-owners Sariel and Zion are making waves with their small business, armed with an unbridled entrepreneurial spirit, a commitment to education, and a desire to help break the cycles of poverty and create generational wealth.

If you’re looking for shipping software that allows you to simply pay for the services you need, Shippo may be the way to go. It was a simple pricing structure and a simple interface that should appeal to many different types of merchants. ce.

ShippingEasy is a solid and affordable software solution for small business shipping needs. With an easy-to-learn interface, clear pricing, impressive customer support, and generous features built-in, the software seems to run pretty smoothly. Most ShippingEasy reviews, whether from professional reviewers or on-the-ground users, agree with that overall conclusion.

On the whole, an in-depth Stamps.com review shows this is a decent software product, with a few flaws that are balanced by solid benefits and useful features. While any business can use Stamps.com, we think this product works best for small sellers who ship between 50 and 500 orders per month.