At the beginning of 2016, we discovered the amazing air-cleansing power of plants and wanted to share our new-found love and knowledge with everyone - our 'Outdoors-In' project was born. To do this we needed a shop space. Miraculously that very same week a small retail space previously used as an office became available on our village high street. Without any experience of shopkeeping but a lot of enthusiasm, we jumped at the chance and signed up.
Two years later, much wiser, and more than slightly sadly, we're saying goodbye to our little shop to give us more time with our small people, while they still want to spend time with us. We'll continue with our online store and plan to grow the space and use it to converse with you lovely folk, to bring you all the goodness you've come to expect from your offline shopping experiences with us.
Some things I've learned along the way:
We should all be thankful to and support our independent retailers as much as possible. Keeping a shop, even a small one, is hard. If done properly, every product has been considered, researched, sourced and the price point agonised over. Bills are dreaded and tax return deadlines loom over like a hidden monster under the bed. Every time anyone walked through my door, I was thankful. Even if they didn’t purchase something, that was their time and consideration, affirming my belief that we had found the best possible products to offer.
We should question our purchases. If the shop owner / sales assistant doesn’t know the in’s and out’s of what they are selling, you shouldn’t buy it. If there isn’t a good reason why they are offering it to you, beyond the fact that they saw it in a generic catalogue and had a space to fill, do you really need it? If they can’t tell you where, how and with what it was made, can you trust it? We’re working hard with our suppliers to provide more transparent information, but we can, and will, tell you everything we know if you ask.
People are, without a doubt, wonderful. We had some regulars, some occasional visitors and some who only popped in once, but pretty much every person gave something to me. A gift of knowledge. A kind word. One fabulous gent popped in one day, got talking and popped back the day after to present me with the most beautiful Jade Plant which I love. I was told once that it took some confidence to come into such a small shop and I was dismayed at first but realised that it was because we are so isolated with our general shopping experience that we don’t feel comfortable having to talk to each other. That’s sad. Once we had nine people in our little space – it was like shuffle twister, but very good natured.
One last thing I will miss are those who live their lives offline. A surprising number of people have commented that they don’t shop online, don’t have smart phones and are generally wary of giving their personal details to a faceless machine. And not just the older generations. These are our people but I have no idea how to stay connected without our shop yet I don’t want to lose them. We’ll be doing markets and pop-up shops so I hope we’ll meet them on our way as I think they should be respected and encouraged.
So, farewell little shop, thank you for growing with me - I will miss you dearly. Whatever winds up behind your window, I shall look in and see our little oasis of plants and inquisitive, friendly folk.
Thank you all for joining in our journey so far. Here's to the next chapter together!
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