Our bricks and mortar shop in Haworth
In 2014 our online business was growing very quickly, we had 3 young children and needed a bigger, more practical space to work from. Preferably something that could handle our growing stock deliveries and postal pickups. So when a local village shop came on the market at the bottom of a steep cobbled street we didnt give it a second glance. But as the months rolled by and nothing suitable was coming up we got desperate.
So one day we peered through the window. It was bigger than we expected, it was quite charming and it was in the perfect location....maybe we could make this work after all?!
We booked a viewing and even though it was practically falling down we kinda fell in love. It opened up some new thinking...like having an actual real life shop and we felt quite excited and motivated suddenly.
So yeah, we took it on!
Really we should have moved to the local town and rented a unit with a delivery bay and car parking. But no. Part of the reason we started our own business was to cut out the commute and moving to a sensible industrial estate 20 minutes away defeated the object. We had also started to stress about our lack of pensions so decided to borrow above our means and buy an old shop and hope for the best!
It was a nervous time as the deposit we needed didn't exist yet we were relying on Christmas to sort that. The gamble paid off and we got the keys Christmas 2015. For the next 3 months we spent every spare hour renovating the space and Modo moved in at the end of March 2016.
With the space came a shop front, we didn't think we wanted a bricks and mortar shop at first but it's turned out to be a complete joy and we love our customers!
