In 2021 we worked with 83 local makers and 14 local food producers as well as our online neighbourfood market of 26 small local food businesses. It’s been an interesting full year in our new premises and we’ve been able to take a good look at what is popular, busy times of the year and what our staple goods need to be to continue to have a steady footfall to the shop in Park Street, Newtown. The good news is that year on year we are increasing sales and building a local audience who support good quality, handmade goods.

2022 Makers

However, despite half of our retail space being devoted to locally made goods, we only saw 22% of our annual sales come from this section of the shop and the majority of this income, 71%, goes back to makers. Whilst as a Social Enterprise one of our aims is supporting local makers, we would not be able to survive if we relied soley on this aspect of our income.

So with the cost of overheads increasing, a change in how customers shop and the need to adapt what we do we will be implementing the following in 2022.
Instead of stocking all our makers all year round we will instead look at:

• Seasonal shopping trends – we know that November/December is the best time for our makers sales along with Mother’s Day, Valentines and Father’s Day. There are also seasonal gifting around wedding season and Halloween.  We will be asking makers to let us know in advance what they have for these events and will curate products accordingly. These deadlines mean that we know what stock we have ahead of time in order to market it properly via our social media channels and website, as well as in-store, and therefore maximise your sales potential.
• We intend to continually stock our most commonly sold items like cards and candles and will maintain a small selection of gifts under £30.

Shopping Trends

We also know from looking at our sales which items are more popular

• Branded items, labels, information on makers and where appropriate bespoke packaging such as jewellery pouches elevate the sellability of a product.
• Items that fit with our overarching theme of planet friendly, reusable or returnable to the maker (ie Candle jars) or items that have a functional use such as mugs, kitchen items etc. We pride ourselves on our zero waste/eco friendly stance so we need to be able to let customers know how ethical your product is and its impact on the environment. If you are choosing planet friendly products such as plant based textiles and inks or have a reuse or recycle policy make sure this is clear on your packaging/product and let us know the details so we can let our customers know too. 
• Gift sets (boxed or prepacked) have shown to be popular. The price range that works for these is £10 – £20. 
• Small stocking/gift bag fillers for under £9
• Items over £50 are not usually an impulse buy and we have seen customers visiting several times before investing in a higher priced item for their home or as a special gift. The larger priced items need to have provenance, a story that makes it different from some random product people can purchase online or in a large retailer. 
• Dumbarton/West of Scotland themed items that are unique to our us are popular too. 

What else we are doing

• We will be changing our displays based on what we know will sell.
• We will also be highlighting a different maker each month.
• We’ll increase our social media presence and we’ll be launching our full website in 2022 with click and collect and local delivery options. 
• We will increase our presence at local markets to bring new customers to the shop
• We will organise pop up events for makers to highlight new product lines or genre ie a pottery showcase or targeting the tourists to the area when this picks up again.
• We will work with makers who need additional support to sell their goods. We are currently applying for investment to open up a new and improved Make Space with access to equipment for makers (sublimation printer, screen printing, labeling etc) as well as a full programme of business support and mentoring. We are aiming for this to be active by Summer 2022.
• We will continue to work with other local independent shops in Dumbarton East to raise the profile of the area.

What you need to do

Look out for an email from Lucy organising a time to review your stock products and agree what should be sold in the shop and when. If you know what items you might have for Mother’s Day, Easter and Father’s Day that you would like to sell with us please let us know no later than the end of February. The deadlines for letting us know what you have will be 1st March, 1st April and 1st May respectively. Please don’t bring items in – instead we need images and descriptions so we can curate more carefully and ideally social/website ready images will help with our marketing. 

Share our posts – we do see new visitors to the shop when makers let their customers know where they can buy from. Publicise your new ranges as they come out and we can share that on our stories. If you have images you can send us this helps us advertise too. Tag us in your posts so we can see what you are up to. 

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