Spend With Us

The World's First Buy From a Bush Business Marketplace

Connecting the city and the bush. The Spend With Us platform brings together conscious consumers and rural, regional & remote small businesses. We have made local small businesses resilient and future-proof throughout natural disasters and beyond. Harnessing the power of social media, small businesses can sell to a massive audience of 365,000+ members in our Facebook Group, one of the largest in Australia!

Spend With Us stands at the forefront as Australia’s premier online marketplace and community platform, dedicated to showcasing and supporting rural and regional small and micro businesses nationwide. Sarah Britz, Founder and Director, launched the website marketplace concept in January 2020. 

 

Connecting the city and the bush, Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business provides a central platform where every rural or regional small and micro business can create their own free website store without all the costs and technical knowledge of creating their own websites and Australians across the country can find their products and support them without trawling numerous websites, scrolling through social media pages, or travelling hundreds of kilometres.

The initiative began with a simple idea: connecting Australian shoppers with rural businesses facing economic hardships due to droughts and bushfires. As an e-commerce expert and experienced web designer, Sarah recognised the immense potential for rural businesses to flourish online and become resilient in challenging times. She took action to build an online marketplace platform to provide this connection.

Sarah Britz, Founder of Spend With Us | Buy From a Bush Business
Sarah Britz | Spend With Us

Spend With Us serves as a vital link between city consumers and rural communities, showcasing a diverse range of products and experiences available to purchase online, all while nurturing economic growth and community resilience in remote areas. It was the first e-commerce marketplace platform that exclusively serviced rural and regional communities and has become an instrumental movement in driving social change. 

In August 2020, the Spend With Us online Marketplace and the Buy From a Bush Business Facebook group joined forces to create the social selling platform you see today. This collaboration synergised the innovative rural marketplace with a thriving community, harnessing the power of social media to turn struggling businesses into thriving online ventures. Today, the platform has over 365,000 members in its community and supports over 1900 registered rural and regional small businesses.

The Spend With Us platform has helped tens of thousands of small businesses to keep trading and selling their products through bushfires, drought, floods, the pandemic, recession and more. As a result, rural communities can now diversify their income streams and be more resilient in difficult times. The platform has helped inject millions of dollars into rural Australia, which our team is extremely proud of!

Spend With Us is an award-winning and powerful platform that empowers rural businesses to thrive in the digital space. In today’s digital age, establishing an online presence is not just an advantage but a necessity for small businesses. It enables them to reach a wider customer base and ensures their survival during times of crisis. Online platforms like Spend With Us offer a fast, easy and affordable lifeline that allows businesses to keep trading even when physical stores face closures or restrictions.

Joining platforms like Spend With Us can be a game-changer for small businesses. Spend With Us offers an accessible and cost-effective way for rural, regional and remote small businesses to create an online presence, providing instant access to a massive advertising reach that would cost businesses $$$$ to access the same using paid digital advertising. With its 365,000+ strong Facebook group and dedicated online marketplace website, businesses can tap into a pre-established customer base of Australians who want to buy from the bush and actively support local and regional enterprises.

When consumers choose to shop on Spend With Us, they are not just making a purchase; they are making a profound and direct difference. They are actively shaping the future of small businesses in regional Australia. Their choices have a profound impact on the livelihoods of these enterprises, helping them not only survive but thrive in challenging environments.

Every transaction made on Spend With Us is a direct investment in the prosperity of rural and regional businesses. It is a vote of confidence in the unique products, services, and craftsmanship that these businesses bring to the table. Shoppers on Spend With Us are not just customers but patrons of hope, resilience, and economic growth.

By supporting these businesses through Spend With Us, consumers play a pivotal role in preserving our vibrant local communities. They help sustain the very essence of these regions, ensuring that they remain vibrant and economically robust. It’s more than shopping; it’s an act of solidarity, a commitment to the sustainability and vitality of regional Australia.  

The Australian Rural Business Awards

In June 2022, Spend With Us launched the annual Australian Rural Business Awards. The event is Australia’s only awards ceremony dedicated solely to rural and regional Small Businesses. These awards showcase the talent in rural Australia and bring awareness of the challenges small business owners have operating in regional areas.     

Many thanks for being part of our amazing community and helping us promote the incredible products and businesses found in rural Australia.  Being part of our family makes a real difference to the lives of so many Australians!

The Spend WIth Us Team

Awards and Highlights

Spend With Us has had the pleasure of being featured in significant media articles and shows over the past few years, including, but not limited to, the Today Show, SBS News, Sky News, Mamamia and countless local rural outlets. One of our highlights was from The Honourable David Littleproud Mp who mentioned us, among the 12 outstanding female leaders, during his address on International Day of Rural Women in 2020.

We have also won a Highly Commended Resilient Australia National Award from the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience in the 2021 Resilient Australia Awards sponsored by the Australian Goverment, and won awards for Covid Response and New Social Enterprise at the 2021 Corporate Kindness Awards by Bambuddha Group. We were a semi finalist in the Telstra Business Awards, 2021 SheEO/Coralus AU Venture Semi-finalists, finalists in the Central Coast Regional Business Awards by Business NSW Awards and finalists in the Australian Small Business Champions Award in 2021 and in 2022, we were 2022 SheEO/Coralus AU Venture Semi-finalists, finalists in the Ausmumpreneur Awards in two categories, finalists in the Australia Post Orias for Best Community Initiative, and finalists in the SBE 2022 Impact Awards.  

Our highlight of 2022 was winning Champion Social Enterprise in the Australian Small Business Champions Awards!

Small Business Champion Social Enterprise 2022
Spend With Us - Winner

The Spend With Us Team

Sarah Britz, Founder of Spend With Us | Buy From a Bush Business on The Today Show

Sarah Britz | Director

Sarah lives on a rural property on the Central Coast, NSW, Australia with her husband, two young children and two dogs.  Sarah  is a social changemaker, author and Web Designer and Developer specialising in e-Commerce for small businesses. She has worked in the digital media space for over 20 years. Sarah is passionate about creating a meaningful impact and effecting positive societal change. She is always looking for ways to advocate and make a difference for the greater good, which is the reason behind why she started Spend With Us.

Spend With Us came about after she offered her services pro-bono to any businesses affected by the bushfires. Sarah’s family were extremely lucky that their property survived the recent bushfires and she wanted to help using her skills and knowledge and give back to the community as best as she could.

Sarah continues to support bushfire, drought, and coronavirus impacted rural and regional Australian small businesses through her work with Spend With Us. In addition, she offers responsive website design and development services via her digital design consultancy (www.sarahbritz.com.au) to small businesses across Australia and the globe. 

Connect with Sarah
Alex

Alex Horton

Sales Manager
Jodie

Jodie Bowker

Customer Support Specialist

Chloe Maxwell

Customer Support Specialist

Founding Members (Former)

The contributions of former co-founders Jenn and Lauren have been an important part of the Spend With Us journey. Their support and input greatly impacted the success of many rural businesses and significantly contributed to the platform’s overall growth and development.

Jenn Donovan

Jenn lives on a farm in the Riverina of NSW, with her husband and 3 children.  Jenn runs a social media and marketing business from her home office (Social Media & Marketing Australia) and supports small business owners by helping them get the most from their marketing. 

Jenn travels around rural towns hosting marketing and social media workshops, and it was the return from a week’s tour of drought-ravaged NSW that she came up with the idea, in October 2019, to start the Buy From a Bush Business Facebook Group, which would allow businesses in rural areas to gain more traction with their marketing, and obtain more sales and more customers.

Jenn concluded her work with Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business in June 2023.

Jenn donovan social media and marketing australia

Lauren Hateley

Lauren resides in a small rural town in North East Victoria, Australia with her husband, two young boys and a few special pets.

She grew up on a family farm and as a Clinical Psychologist, she is passionate about supporting children, young people, parents and families through difficult times. Lauren’s family also owns a farm supplies store in rural Victoria, and so Lauren is appreciative of the challenges faced by small business owners during times of economic instability.

Lauren also has a deep passion for rural health and created the Vic Spend With Us Facebook page in January 2020 due to feeling helpless whilst the bushfires were raging across Victoria and wanting to do more than just donating money to her selected charity.

Her goal was to provide a platform to directly support Victorian families and their children who were suffering adversity and trauma following the bushfires and in turn positively impact their well-being and livelihoods.

Lauren concluded her work with Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business in December 2021.

Lauren Hateley