Inside a bustling Center City corridor on Ludlow Street, there’s a place where immigrant entrepreneurs are thriving and cultures are coming together. You might have seen Immigrant Marché popping up at Reading Terminal Market, the Christmas Village, or Triple Bottom Brewing. Now the multicultural marketplace and nonprofit has its own pop-up storefront on Ludlow Street.
A project of The Welcoming Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit that promotes inclusive economic growth, Immigrant Marché’s Ludlow Street storefront is open through the end of July. Layla El Tannir, director of entrepreneurship at The Welcoming Center, said she hopes to extend the pop-up through the end of the summer, and has plans to open another location soon.
The shop features products from immigrants representing Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Products sold include vegan nail polish, embroidered pillows, jewelry, art prints, coffee beans, and jam — all made by immigrants who now call Philadelphia home. Entrepreneurs must be residents of Philadelphia and have a business registered here, and must have previously participated in an Immigrant Marché pop-up.
The storefront — offered to The Welcoming Center rent-free — is part of Meantime on Market, an urban design experiment from Interface Studio Architects that is activating vacant storefronts along one of Philadelphia’s most significant urban corridors in partnership with the City of Philadelphia, Center City District, and local property owners.
“These businesses alone would have never been able to have the same entry point,” El Tannir said. “This whole project is giving them the opportunity to do that.”
She said the idea of the storefront is to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses and learn how to operate storefronts. The entrepreneurs each take shifts working inside the store, which is open Wednesday to Saturday from noon to 7 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.
El Tannir said she’s regularly asked how Philadelphians can support immigrants. Her answer: Shop at immigrant-owned businesses.
“Maybe we don’t feel it as much directly in Center City Philadelphia, but there’s a rhetoric that has been built against immigrants,” El Tannir said. “Sometimes that overshadows the great value that immigrants bring to our community.”
