It's time to refurbish the shop!

We must be mad!

Having spent the past 12 months compiling our website, we have now decided to completely refurbish our shop. We have been inspired by watching the BBC Programme  'Mary Queen of Shops'. The ideas she has for transforming small retail shops such as ours are fantastic.

Steve has been busy measuring up and experimenting with different layouts on the computer. We are very limited for space and so it is a real challenge to come up with a format and design that allows us to offer a wide range of fantastic crafting products without over crowding and cluttering the shop. We want to be able to display more inspirational crafting ideas and to make it easier for customers to browse through our wide range of products.

We have bought several books on retailing to seek out ideas we can adapt and we have been visiting other retailers to see what they are doing - we are certainly not too proud to 'steal' their best ideas. Earlier in the week we visited 'Inspirations' in Preston. 'Inspirations' is a relatively new venture by Ann Newhouse, an old friend of Sue's.  Ann made us really welcome and it was great to catch up on all the news. It's the nice thing about the crafting industry - even though we are competitors, everyone is really friendly and supportive and willing to share ideas and experiences.

After leaving Ann, we spent the rest of the day at a shopfitters in Preston looking at the vast variety of diplays and fittings that are available.

We ended the day with heads full of new and exciting ideas which Steve is now incorporating into the design layouts.