What are the benefits of a brick and mortar shop?

Why having a tiny high street bag shop is great for business.

We’ve been making and selling British made bags for nearly six years. At first we were an online ecommerce bag shop, which was great. Running a small business from our living room was convenient and fun - until it wasn’t.

So nearly three years ago, we took on a small space on the high street of our local town, Pateley Bridge. Unlike lots of small businesses (especially in the Yorkshire Dales) we started online then set up shop on the high street. Since then, we’ve learnt a lot about how to run a high street store, and discovered some of the amazing benefits that come from selling our waxed canvas bags in person.

We have somewhere to store stock.

It might seem silly, but the more our business grew, the more bags seemed to take over our house and life. Our living room was stacked floor to ceiling with roll top backpacks, tote bags, cross body bags and giant rolls of waxed cotton canvas. While our brand got bigger, our living space and ability to turn off from work got smaller, until something had to give.

Luckily, a retail space half way up Pateley Bridge high street became available at just the right moment; we moved all of our bag stock to the shop, got our house back, and the rest is history.

It’s also given us a space we can retreat to when working from home becomes overwhelming. Sometimes all our brains need to dream up new bag designs and ideas for the company is a change of environment, which having a physical shop has given us.

Atmosphere and brand experience.

We’re a British bag brand with clear values. We make our bags in the UK, as sustainably as possible, with a traceable supply chain. And although we love our website, our values don’t always come across online.

Having a high street shop allows us to create an atmosphere that reflects what we believe in, and authentically represent our company in a physical space. Everything from the paint colours to our brand font and the objects and artwork we put on the walls contributes to this, and creates a three-dimensional brand experience for anyone who walks into the shop.

This can help generate sales, but more importantly it helps let people know what we’re all about.

Increased traffic.

Having a physical store means that we can sell our bags in more than one place. Our website and our shop run alongside each other, creating a positive feedback loop for bag sales. People who step into the shop for the first time often ask whether we have a website, and will engage with us online after visiting. In the same way, those who find us online know where to come if they want to check out our bags in real life.

Instant gratification is still a big driver of sales, and having a physical shop makes it easier for people to purchase things. That being said, we want people to buy our bags and keep them for a long time, so if anyone ever has any questions about them it’s super useful to be on hand to answer them in person, straight away.

Personalised experiences.

Research has shown that people are much more likely to buy something if they have a personalised shopping experience, or if they have a more personal relationship with the business or employee they’re buying from. Having a physical shop allows us to fulfil this!

It also lets us meet our customers, which is really important to us. Finding out how they use their cross body bags on dog walks, or their roll top backpacks on their daily commute, or how their natural waxed canvas bag kept everything dry in a sudden downpour is what makes our business worthwhile. Hearing from people directly also lets us design better bags.

If you want to find out more about what people think, you can read all of our bag reviews here.

All of these things have benefited our bag company, but most importantly…

We became part of a community.

We’re not just a bag shop. That’s what we started as, but since opening our high street shop in Pateley Bridge, we’ve become much more. We’re a coffee shop, a meeting space, and now we have the Wildish Club community interest company too, a growing community of people who come together to do fun things outside.

Setting up shop has allowed us to properly integrate with the people and businesses around us, contribute to the local economy, and build lasting friendships with the people we’ve met.

The Yorkshire Dales weather also makes Pateley Bridge a great place to check how weatherproof our waxed canvas bags really are.

Check out our collection of GOTS certified organic waxed cotton canvas bags here.