My independent shop, Winter’s Moon on North St. Chichester, recently celebrated five years on the high street. In the current climate we realise this is no mean feat. Our journey has been meandering – the business started small over 15 years ago with house sales, then came online and a studio outside the city.
In 2019 I was restless and feeling isolated, so I decided to find a spot for a Christmas pop up. I got lucky with our landlords who were renovating the beautiful listed building that was a tailors on North St. We popped up, we had fun, made enough sales to realise there was potential and then I took the plunge to take on the space permanently. My landlords gave me flexibility with just a year long lease to start with and they didn’t ask for a big deposit, all of which made it feel like less of a risk. This was early 2020 so we then ploughed on through lockdowns, austerity, power cuts and more. Our team has grown from two to six, and we have taken on an extra workspace in Crane St to run workshops and make lampshades and more.
I am not sure how we would be here if I hadn’t had that first pop-up opportunity, and I worry that other creative independent businesses aren’t able to get a foothold to test their ideas and businesses because the incubator spaces aren’t so easy to come by. The smaller arcades that existed in the city ten years ago have been developed into other things, and the layout of the city means we don’t have that many smaller units and side streets. I also suspect that many landlords just aren’t as accommodating as mine have been.
The city needs these creative independent seeds to be able to grow into proper businesses because that is what helps give us the difference over other high streets, and will compel customers who live further away to choose to visit Chichester rather than Winchester or Guildford.
There are of course many other factors that make a place, and the independent retail offering is just one part of it. But we need fresh thinking, creativity and a dedication to really fostering the creative seeds and making Chichester a place where people want to visit and spend time. Because when people spend time in a place, they spend money and every single one of us benefits from the local economy being as strong as it can possibly be.