Posted on

Pound Stretcher Strop

Greetings Rockhoppers. I’m going to keep it short and sweet tonight, as I’m just a little bit narked, and as it’s apparently “Blue Monday” I don’t want to feed into the collective grump any more than I have to. So here goes…

Just when you thought the high street couldn’t get any more bleak, you find that something rather dubiously called a “Pound Stretcher” is going to open in a massive retail unit just down the road from you. (In this case, the Friary Retail Park in Plymouth). This has irked me for several reasons, which I will try to summarise as follows…

Firstly, whilst I accept these places have to exist (otherwise where would we get our £1 bottles of Herbal Essences with the old branding from?), the place for these units is surely somewhere discrete and out of sight, perhaps sandwiched between a Bon Marche and a pop-up calendar shop. The place is not on a highly visible retail park, with neighbours such as Dunelm, Smyths, Hoobbycraft and Pets at Home. (OK, so hardly Westfield, but surely, Plymouth City Council, we can do better than this?!).

Secondly, the sheer size of it. It’s going to be HUGE. I like my pound shops small and harmless, not the size of a small hanger, with rows upon rows of discounted nonsense. Seriously. There’s only so many £1 items anyone needs…

Thirdly, and probably predictably, I’m not a big fan of mass produced, cheap… stuff. It’s pretty much the polar opposite of everything we believe in at Rockpool; but that’s OK, it doesn’t mean we can’t co-exist. But I do object to it being in such a large unit in such a prominent location in the South West’s largest city, mainly because… and here’s my fourth and final gripe…

The message it sends. It says, in gigantic cheap, yellow letters… this country’s had some pretty rubbish financial times recently, things are hard for a lot of people and you can’t afford anything a). nice, b). not made of plastic and c). costing much more than a £1. That’s not to say that millions of people (many of whom live in the Westcountry) haven’t had an incredibly hard few years, but that’s not the whole picture! For goodness sake, give us some confidence, give us some hope, give us… oh I don’t know, something that doesn’t just hammer home the point: “Times are tough – so stretch that pound for all it’s worth”.

Plymouth deserves better Plymouth City Council. And I think anything, literally, ANYTHING would have been better than this. Times may be hard, but as important as it is to be frugal and live within our means, it is also important to not lose sight of the big picture: things will change, things will get better, and when it does, we’ll be wishing we picked up the phone to Mamas and Papas…

 

Posted on

New Year, new lines

Evening Rockhopper fans!

Once again, a slightly late entry. The excuse this week is a good one – I spent most of last night writing a mammouth email to a potential new stockist, who makes the most beautiful, handmade clutch bags.

In fact, I’ve been working super hard in the last couple of weeks at getting more new lines onto the RT shelves. Unfortunately, all too often those old pals “logisitics” and “cash flow” buddy-up to scupper my plans for new product lines. I’d love, love, LOVE to fill RT’s cyber shelves with even more wonderful, beautifully made, unusual products for our brilliant, discerning customers, but without getting a stonking bank loan, thereby putting lots of pressure on the teenie fledgling that is our precious little business, we have to bide our time, add lines as and when we can afford them, and grow “organically”.

The problem with growing “organically” is that it can take an awfully long time; which of course can be a good thing (time to grow creatively, develop ideas, build relationships and really try to find our identity in the crazy world of retail), but can also be, quite frankly, mind-numbingly frustrating and an altogether right royal pain in the derriere. What we need is a lottery win – that’d bazooka a whole heap of challenges. Or a wealthy benefactor. Like in those Charles Dickins’ novels, where some long lost, mystery relative (usually related to our late mother who somehow disgraced herself by marrying beneath her thereby cutting herself off from her fortune forever), comes out of the woodwork just at the critical moment, scoops us out of the gutter, puts is in a top hat and tails and presents us at the society ball as the most elegible batchlor in London… OK, there is a chance I’m labouring the metaphor a tad. But the principle stands – what we could do with is a wad of cash all earmarked for stock – *sigh*.

Anyhoo – in other news, I’m booking in craft fairs left, right and Chelsea, so keep an eye on our social media and home page for updates. Can’t wait to get back out on the road with all the new gear. Sadly we’ve been turned away from a couple of events because we’re not the actual makers of our stock (which would be impressive – see The Elusive Super Crafter entry…). It’s a pity that some people see retail outlets as the bad guys; incidentally, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, we sell products so I guess in that respect we have something in common with John Lewis or Amazon, but I think we can all agree that’s where the similarities end. Hey ho – we’ll continue in our quest to change hearts and minds, and who knows? Maybe one day that long lost relative  might come a-knocking…

Posted on

The merits of communal dining…

First of all – Happy 2014 one and all! Having said that, it is 5th January, so it’s waaaay too late to be bothering with all that palava. I’m sure most of us by this stage have made resolutions, broken resolutions, re-made more realistic resolutions and started counting the days until the next bank holiday weekend. (Just me? Oh, OK then…). Christmas at RT Towers was quiet and fairly uneventful. Mini-RT loved the wrapping paper and labels as much as what was actually inside – as expected, and I actually managed to get dinner on the table by mid-afternoon – which most certainly not expected.

In an effort to combat the post-New Year blues (and because we didn’t eat enough during the previous week), the hubby and I went for dinner at The Riverford Field Kitchen near Buckfastleigh in Devon last night – and oh my word, what an unusual night it was… The food was absolutely amazing, and incredibly reasonably priced, but that wasn’t what was unusual – the out-of-the-ordinary element to the evening was that Riverford have you sitting at communal tables; so when we arrived we were seated with 2 other couples, who also didn’t know each other. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have an ominous sinking feeling about the whole evening – my past experience of striking up conversations with strangers has not been entirely successful, not least because I tend to laugh when I’m nervous or when I can’t actually hear what the other person is saying – with some unfortunate consequences. But I was to be proved wrong! Not only were our dinner companions very friendly, but they were really interesting (one of them was an Oscar winning sound engineer – I kid you not!), and it got me thinking – maybe Riverford were on to something? If we’d have sat at our own little 2 seater table, OK Mr RT and I would have had a perfectly lovely evening, but we would invariably have ended up chatting about one or more of the following topics: mini-RT, the state of the spare room / loft / utility area, when we were going to start doing some proper exercise, and what we would do if we won the lottery. All worthy and productive avenues of conversation, but pretty much what we talk about over dinner at home. Whereas being thrown into a table of strangers (not literally) meant we had to ask questions and take an interest in something outside our little universe. And yes, it helped that our table were full of very interesting people, but still – we wouldn’t have discussed post-Oscar parties or the overpopulation of Holland if it had just been the two of us…

But anyway – a truly fab evening was had by all and the food, as I said, was out of this world. As a local success story, we love Riverford anyway, but that aside, we’d heartily recommend the whole experience to anyone looking for an evening with a twist. Plus the desserts have to be seen to be believed – think hubby and I had better get back to that exercise conversation…