Made Cleveland Vendors Say Owner Hasn't Paid Them in Months

Made Cleveland, a maker shop based on Coventry Road since 2022, has allegedly not paid dozens of its vendors in the past few months. Credit: Photo by Mark Oprea

When Gina Wilkolak received an acceptance letter to sell her hand-painted earrings at Made Cleveland, a sense of relief and celebration came over her.

A marketing manager by day, Wilkolak had been on a yearlong hunt for a brick and mortar storefront with an easy barrier to entry where she could sell her art. In the fall of 2022, tired of eyeing suburban consignment shops and artist fairs, she applied to Made Cleveland’s shop in Coventry, and, by that November, was amongst its hundred-plus vendors with both space online and in-person at one of the largest maker marts in Northeast Ohio.

Like all vendors, Wilkolak signed up for what she figured was a fair deal: 60 percent of revenue went to her; the rest went to Made Cleveland. Vendors got paid on the 15th of every month. There were no rental fees. The monthly cost for a space on Made’s site was nothing.

“The concept of this was awesome,” Wilkolak told Scene, sitting in a coffee shop in Waterloo. “I don’t consider myself an artist—but I wanted to be somewhere physically in Cleveland. I was really proud when I got picked.”

Two years after Wilkolak began selling her laser-cut wood earrings under the moniker Pause My Game, she left Made Cleveland miffed and dispirited. Ash O’Connor, the store’s 38-year-old founder, had not paid out her income in months. “Only a handful of times in the past two years I’ve been paid on time” she said.

Just this fall, Wilkolak found out that her case wasn’t unique. Dozens of vendors and employees of Made Cleveland have either not been paid on schedule, as proposed, or not received revenue from sales of their goods at all.

Three of them, including Wilkolak, have filed lawsuits in Cleveland Heights Small Claims Court in the past month, claiming that O’Connor owes thousands of dollars in backpay to her vendors. ($693 to Wilkolak.)

With holiday markets in Cleveland picking up steam around the city, like the Winterland Market downtown or the ceramics fair at 78th Street Studios, many shoppers are picking up gifts for loved ones backed by the premise they’re supporting local artists and artisans. Many of those vendors see profits double or triple thanks to a seasonal uptick spending for Christmas.

Which doesn’t seem to be the case for a handful of them at Made Cleveland. Scene spoke to a half dozen current and former artists and makers with booth spaces at Made Cleveland and all noted its owner had been late with, or not paid at all, the money from their art they were due.

Lucy Bailey, an artist who filed two suits against O’Connor to reclaim a total of $1,923, said that she sued Made Cleveland after talking to other vendors like Wilkolak.

“I didn’t know what was happening to other people, really,” she said. “I thought it was only me.”

After two years of operating as a hyperlocal Etsy, O’Connor started renting the former City Buddha space on Coventry in 2022. Her concept quickly spread around the maker community. Over 150 vendors—selling tea, vanilla extract, ink drawings or dog bowties—signed up that year to secure a shelf, booth or wall space.

Levaille Eitzman, an artist and former co-manager of Made Cleveland, said they discovered in August that founder Ash O’Connor was using business revenue meant for vendors for her own personal expenditures. Credit: Mark Oprea

Made Cleveland was sold by O’Connor as a sort of lifeboat for makers coming out of the pandemic. “It’s about gaining access to locally-made goods as easily as possible,” O’Connor told Ideastream last May. “That’s not only beneficial to vendors, but to the community itself.”

That public benefit is what drew artist Levaille Eitzman to sell their bespoke, upcycled necklaces at Made this April. They quickly found a home there: in June, after a three-hour interview, Eitzman became co-manager.

But Made Cleveland was stripped of the lure of its ideal when, this September, Eitzman discovered that a bulk of revenue coming into the store was not going into the pockets of vendors waiting for pay. But into O’Connor’s purse herself, they allege.

A deep dive into the balance sheet on Shopify, the point-of-sale system O’Connor used to keep track of Made’s books, was a revelation: O’Connor’s car payments, Starbucks orders, hundreds of dollars for hotels, DoorDash orders and Uber rides—all were being paid from store revenues.

“It appeared that she was getting all of her groceries from money that the artists were making,” Allie Morris, an artist who worked as co-manager at Made until November, told Scene.

“Typically you’d think with a business that young,” she said, “you’d be putting it back into your business?”

In interviews with Scene, past employees described O’Connor as a “flighty” entrepreneur with high-octane interest in her passions, whether they be art, fixing flutes or growing business ideas.

Reached for comment, O’Connor chalked up her alleged debt to dozens, if not hundreds, of artists as a byproduct of the pandemic, of “personal hardships” and the “complexities of running a grassroots operation.”

“We recognize that some payments to our valued vendors have been delayed, and we deeply regret any inconvenience this has caused,” O’Connor said via a statement partly generated by AI. “This is not reflective of the respect and appreciation we have for the incredible artists and entrepreneurs who have trusted us with their work.”

“We are actively working to address these delays while ensuring we maintain the integrity and sustainability of Made Cleveland,” she added. (Eitzman balked at O’Connor’s statement: “This sounds like what she’s been telling us for years,” they said.)

O’Connor faces other financial quagmires.

Last October, Vox Funding, a small-business loan service based in New York, filed a complaint in New York State Supreme Court alleging that O’Connor owed them a total of $25,586 after ending automatic payments with the company that September. (Calls to a lawyer for Vox were not returned.)

Vendors told Scene they think Made Cleveland might better function, or even flourish, as a cooperative while O’Connor sorts out its apparent financial problems. Or, they said, leave altogether.

Even as past vendors watch new artists apply this season.

“I mean, they hand-paint their sign, they make their retail displays, and they go in, they set up,” Eitzman said. “They get really excited about finally having, like, an in-store place to shop from.”

“I saw some vendor posting on Instagram about how excited they were that their paintings were going to be there.” Wilkolak added close by. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God. They’re coming in, and they don’t even know.’”

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