This piece is part of an ongoing series on women entrepreneurs addressing community and economic development needs through small-scale manufacturing.

It’s a Thursday in spring, and for Alex Fraioli that means one thing: The Biergarten opens in a few hours. She walks through the hand-carved, ornate, double doors of the Heurich House Museum, glimpsing the intricate mosaic tilework in the front hall and the combination gas and electric chandeliers bubbling with light. She’s still amazed every day that this is where she gets to go to work.

Built in 1894 by German immigrant Christian Heurich and his wife Mathilde, the building is a testament to historic craftsmanship and the contributions of artisans to the economic vitality and visual beauty of Washington, D.C. With its hand-painted murals and intricate wood carvings, it also reminds Fraioli of the importance of supporting craftspeople and artisans today.

As assistant director of the Heurich House Museum, which is reinventing the traditional historic house museum model, Fraioli is fighting for contemporary small-scale manufacturers to be seen as essential contributors to the local economy. She leads the Heurich Urban Manufacturing Incubator and the DC Makers’ Guild, two initiatives designed to equip business owners not only to build thriving enterprises, but to tackle extractive practices that undermine their very existence.

Both initiatives are extensions of the Heurich House Museum’s mission to preserve historic craftsmanship while creating a path to success for present-day entrepreneurs striving to work in a similar capacity. Given the intense competition in D.C. for sought-after real estate and a crowded online marketing environment, it’s hard for these smaller-scale business owners to break into storefronts and business growth models.

The Biergarten opened in 2019, as part of the museum’s effort to bolster its relevance in the community by bringing back to life Senate Beer, an original recipe from the city’s historic Chr. Heurich Brewing Co. It’s an oasis in a busy city, with a small garden enclosed with high walls and green landscaping tucked away behind the Heurich House mansion. “I love the quiet moments in the garden when the visitors, neighborhood residents and participating business owners talk to each other,” Fraioli says.

In 2012, the museum launched a Christmas Markt to showcase local artisans inspired by the European Christmas markets that draw thousands of visitors annually. In 2018, Fraioli joined the team, originally to tell the stories of the museum’s history. But shortly after, the pandemic hit, and the museum shifted to helping the small, artisan business owners from the Christmas Markt determine how to stay afloat despite COVID-related restrictions to things like open markets.

For Fraioli, this unforeseen opportunity was the perfect chance to combine her two loves: serving the community and telling stories. As a little girl, she grew up in a service-focused family, working on community projects in the Girl Scouts. In high school, she interned at the Robin Hood Foundation in New York City to help low-income families with social services. When she went on to college at American University, she focused on communications to gain the skills needed to tell the stories of these impactful organizations.

After graduating, she took her newfound knowledge to the nonprofit Martha’s Table, where she worked to improve food access and education in D.C. The whole time, she ran a small freelance business on the side, helping nonprofits and small businesses tell their stories through compelling designs and social media. “I came at each piece from a community-building and advocacy perspective. How do we show people what is happening right here,” she shares.

These are the skills she relied on when the pandemic hit D.C. and everything closed down for months. She started to work with the Christmas Markt’s business owners and promote them through online showcases. As the city opened back up, Fraioli and the museum team realized they could do more to support this community.

Not only could they be the engine behind highlighting historic artisans, they could expand upon their instrumental work amplifying contemporary craftspeople. They came up with a new plan and launched the Urban Manufacturing Incubator, a series of events and educational programs to grow all types of artisan and product businesses in D.C.

In this spirit, their first decision was to host monthly Mini Markts in 2022 to help home-based businesses refine their branding and increase revenues at local markets. When local artisan Candice Leubbering of All Mapped Out heard about this, she immediately signed up. Her map-inspired decor business started as a creative outlet while working full-time. She finds old maps and makes them useful again by creating coasters and pins. Her customers love to find their prized hometowns, favorite vacation spots and places they hope to visit transformed into accessories.

For Leubbering, the Mini Markt was an entry point to the new Incubator. Staff and mentors helped her refine her booth design, coached her on how to talk with customers and helped her develop new revenue sources. By 2023, Luebbering produced enough of her coasters and pins and refined her marketing sufficiently to qualify for a day at the annual Christmas Markt. Her successful sales and growing demand meant that by 2024 she had two days at the Markt. This year, she plans to operate her business full-time.

It’s a milestone to celebrate, but Fraioli knows the road ahead for Leubbering and business owners like her will be full of uphill battles. Small, artisan businesses face challenges in every direction. Once a sector known and celebrated for filling the city with ornate homes, museums and memorials, artisans have for decades been pushed out of commercial space and seemed to disappear from the local economy.

In 2004, the first artisan market popped up in the city after a long hiatus. Such markets are essential, given the difficulty small-scale artisans face in finding suitable property to lease.

But the popup market scene can be tough, too. Artisan business owners regularly face extractive consignment fees levied by shop owners or high participation fees for holiday markets, despite the lack of adequate marketing to attract customers.

The Incubator could help with some of these challenges, but in 2022 Fraioli stepped up to help lead a new program: the DC Makers’ Guild. It’s modeled after the DC Brewers’ Guild, which the museum had helped form in 201, and inspired by a group of successful business owners from the early Christmas Markets who were facing mounting issues with retailers, markets and a lack of government support.

Under the museum’s management in partnership with its maker members, the DC Makers’ Guild builds on the Incubator’s mentorship to artisan businesses and provides an essential coordinated voice in advocating for the sector and its interests. The Incubator amplified this work in 2024 by publishing a Maker Bill of Rights to improve what business owners can expect from local popup markets.

What makes this such a compelling model? After all, many other cities understand the critical importance of small product businesses to their local economies and to vibrant placemaking, and some invest in markets and programming for artisans and small producers.

But the DC Makers’ Guild provides product showcasing, collective representation and advocacy for artisan makers broadly by leveraging an ancient model. It goes “back to the future” by reimagining the guild.

“The DC Makers’ Guild is purely in service to the makers,” Fraioli says. “It’s vital, because it’s led by the maker businesses, for the needs of the maker businesses, with a focus on community-building and advocacy to stabilize and grow this key business sector in D.C.”

This post was originally published on Next City.