Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - Page number 82 - November/December 2021

82 Tell us a bit about your store and how you came to open the business. Shopkeeping is in my blood as I was brought up in a village store in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s in Yorkshire. I left home at 18 and enjoyed a varied career in live events and theatre, working as a Stage Manager in the West End. More recently I continued in the field to deliver the technical, content, planning and production aspects of large B2B conferences and events nationally and internationally for FTSE100 companies and major blue hip businesses. At 50 I decided I had had enough of travel and the immense pressure and long hours so I decided to open a shop in my home town of Malton, north Yorkshire. This solved the travel problem but the hours were still long and pressure constant! Is the location important to the success of your store? Malton is a thriving market town with a wonderful collaborative business community and loyal customer base who value Indie retailers. COVID proved this. Malton has visitors but our customer base is predominantly locals who come to town to get jobs done. We still have a post office, banks, dentists, hospital, BMW and Volvo garages, so people come to kill time browsing or put us on their go-to shopping list for gifts and cards, as well as a nice place to bring their takeaway coffee, sit on our terrace and browse books. I think that people feel more comfortable and safe in a small town now than visiting a city. Our high street and market place have plenty of Indie shops making it an interesting and engaging place to visit and where you will find a much better shopping experience. There are more carefully curated choices and ideas than online shopping. What challenges were overcome when the company was starting out? Starting a business is always challenging and there are so many unknowns as you start out. The challenges of obtaining finance and making choices – everything from what to stock to which EPOS system would be best. We did plenty of research and took things slowly to start with, conserving cash and doing lots of the shop refurb work ourselves. I worked alone every day in the shop for quite a while before we took the step of employing someone else. There is so much admin and process to running a shop aside from the actual customer facing activity, making the days often very long. When COVID struck, our Malton shop had been running for three years and was established. However, our second shop in Whitby had only been running a few winter months and was in need of a good summer of trade so lock down was particularly challenging there. We managed to get online the first week of the first lock down offering cards and 500 products for delivery and, when allowed, click and collect. We offered a book ordering and home delivery service, traditional mail order and WhatsApp video shopping sessions too. Both our shops were small and with social distancing it became clear that in order for the Malton shop to thrive and survive we needed more space. With Christmas being 40 percent of our business we had no room for more stock and only space for two customers at a time. We had been considering expanding and adding a bookshop so in May 2020 we decided to take the plunge and move next door in Malton and add a proper bookshop and also expand our gift space substantially. On October 1 st we opened and traded very successfully for a month then had a further lock down, then a spectacular December before a further lock down. This was challenging. What is your customer base? Malton does have visitors, particularly this year with the staycation boom, but the main body of our customers are locals. Now we are able to offer our craft workshops and more book events and activities, we are really able to engage with them and give them a value added Staying power Liz Kemp, owner of Kemps, talks through the challenges of operating a retail business during the pandemic, and how small independents can thrive amongst the internet giants