We are shopkeepers now!

So, at Easter 2025 on a dull and damp Good Friday, we opened our shop. 

It was never our intention to open a shop, but was always a seemingly unachievable dream.  That all changed when we moved to Clovelly in August 2024.

I really didn’t want to work for anyone else if that could be avoided, having done it for my entire life, but was really struggling to decide what, if anything, I could do. I looked for work from home jobs and thought I stood a good chance with one of them which would have been great for me (and them) but sadly it was not meant to be.

I kept walking past the old Donkey Shop in the village, and thinking how sad it was that it was empty. On nothing more than a whim and making a tentative enquiry to the estate office, I found out nobody had any concrete interest, and would I like a look?  ‘It wouldn’t hurt would it?’ I thought to myself, just to be nosey…

A few days later we got the keys so we could look around. I admit when we first saw it I thought…blimey this is going to need a whole lot of work. Is it worth it? Loads of prep, filling, painting and more. It seemed overwhelming to be honest. Apart from the fact it has a little stream run off running through it, it was also filled with rubbish. The carpets were manky, it hadn’t been occupied for so long and the windows had been kept shut so it was mildewy on the walls… not selling it to you am I?

BUT, the space was good and we wiped a few bits and realised a good clean would sort a lot of it. We were a little crestfallen to be honest thinking that we’d built it up in our heads to be lovely, but it was definitely going to be what you could describe as a ‘project’!

We walked down to the harbour and sat on the quay with a pint to chat it over. We went from ‘sod it - let’s to it’ to ‘no we are insane’.  We decided to sleep on it.

The next few days we started to think about what we could use it for, what rooms could function as and we started to get a little bit excited. Then we started to get a bit more enthused until after a few days we were actually thinking ‘we could do this!’.

After putting in our proposal for the shop and meeting with the estate, they confirmed it was ours if we wanted it.  What had we done?

This was mid-March and we decided that we needed to open by Easter to see how it goes. That left us just a few weeks to sort out the ground floor rooms and produce stock for the shop. It hit me like a brick - Oh my goodness I need to be sewing like the wind. Michael started printing like it was going out of fashion and in between we started to get the ground floor into some sort of shape. We ripped up the carpets and put anything that we didn’t want to keep in the main room. This was then cleared by the amazing Paul (we can’t thank you enough!) and then a friend came down to help us scrape the floor and clean the walls etc (thanks Karyn you are a diamond).

The floor took longer to dry than we planned so that took up a few days of waiting as we couldn’t walk on it.

Michael was amazing, and spent endless evenings after work painting the floors and walls with special damproof paint, putting up shelves, filling holes and goodness knows what else. 

We then finally decided on a logo etc after lots of versions and Michael ordered the shop sign.  

On the Wednesday before Good Friday we spent all day in there making it look like a shop. When I look back at photos of our opening day, it looks quite empty compared to now, but we were so delighted.

That night, it rained like a monsoon and we came down to the shop to find that it had flooded in the downstairs room. I wanted to cry.  We’d put everything we had into this and luckily we hadn’t left anything on the floor! We managed to clean it up and Paul (thanks again!) bought down some sandbags as there had been a weather warning for that night. We went down there on Friday morning and thank goodness all was OK.

We’ve now been open for a month and whilst there has been some quiet days, that’s fine - it’s still early in the season. We are really happy with how it’s been going so far.

Our Very First Customers, Opening day came, and it was very quiet, I stood behind the counter and thought ‘what on earth have we done?’ but then a lovely Belgian family came in and bought 4 cards. To me, I was so happy it was like they had spent a million pounds. I couldn’t stop smiling. They were delighted when I told them they were our first customers. They said ‘why not take our picture to remember the occasion?’ so I did, and here they are.

Opening day came, and it was very quiet, I stood behind the counter and thought ‘what on earth have we done?’ but then a lovely Belgian family came in and bought 4 cards. To me, I was so happy it was like they had spent a million pounds. I couldn’t stop smiling. They were delighted when I told them they were our first customers. They said ‘why not take our picture to remember the occasion?’ so I did, and here they are.

Our best sellers so far have been our Mermaid lino print, a limited edition print of one of Michael’s oil paintings called storm over Northam Burrows and his ‘Waveriders’ surf lino print. On my side, my Salty Seagulls keep selling out as do my Cuddle Fish. 

We are growing our stock gradually whilst we find our feet. Over all we’ve chosen some lovely complementary items, as far we can from independent makers, a few mistakes but that’s how you learn.

I never thought at age 57 I would be sitting in a shop of my own, living in a beautiful village by the sea, yet here I am. So I guess the moral of the story is that a) you’re never too old to give things a go, and b) you never know where life will take you.

Until next time….

Woo