Suite of Events & Past Projects
SJMADE Events
Community is one of our four organizational pillars and we aim to serve our community by providing fun, welcoming, and free events year-round. Here are a few that we’re most proud of.
SJMADE Fest
SJMADE Fest — SJMADE’s flagship festival event — typically held in June is SJMADE’s most-attended event ever. First launched in 2023 and located at History Park San José, the event features over 250+ amazing makers, artists, designers, chefs, bakers, curators, crafters and creative small businesses.
The event boasts three vendor areas: Artist Avenue, Maker Marketplace and a Food Market featuring some of our very favorite food trucks and food stalls. Additionally, the event featured programming & activities including a double-sized Kitten Lounge by Mini Cat Town, live K-Pop dance performances & entertainment.
Friend Fest
What started as an anti-Valentine’s Day event in 2022, Friend Fest is now an annual celebration of friendship and platonic love. Typically occurring in February, Friend Fest features 350 makers, artists & creative small businesses all celebrating best friends, new friends, old friends, "we're just friends", "wanna be more than friends" or whatever!
Located at downtown San José's South Hall, Friend Fest also features lots of special programming and activities, including a Photo Booth, Keycap Making Workshop, DIY Friendship Bracelet Making Station, and a Community Love Letter Wall, in addition to special Friend Fest door giveaways (and most importantly) lots and lots of friendship vibes.
SJMADE Holiday Fair
The SJMADE Holiday Fair — the largest winter holiday craft fair in the Bay Area — takes place every November Black Friday and Small Business Saturday).
Held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, the event featured over 400 amazing makers, artists, designers, curators, workshop guides, food producers and creative small businesses.
As always, admission was free for attendees.
Founded in 2011, San José Made has the singular mission of helping creative small businesses grow their business and brand in San José and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area. From there, we’ve designed our strategy to be multifaceted, flexible, empathetic and accommodating.
We do large scale events. We do pop-up retail. We have our own dynamically programmed micro-retail storefronts and we're looking to grow the micro-retail movement for small businesses throughout the Bay Area. We do small curated markets. We create social media campaigns celebrating small businesses. We organize maker meet-ups. We help community creatives create for their community. And now we have our own online shop and retail storefront!
In other words, we are continually thinking of creative ways to support creative small businesses!
