Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
Independent specialist retailer Ludlow Cookshop has moved premises within the south Shropshire town.
The business, which has been run by Debbie Chatham and Sebastian Parker since 2006, relocated from its 500sq ft outlet at 6a Pepper Lane to 16 Tower Street on August 25.
Debbie Chatham said: “We moved on the August Bank holiday (in the rain) using a wheelbarrow and a timely abandoned Tesco trolley! Anywhere other than Ludlow, we would have been stopped and questioned as to where we were going with quantities of stock – but no one batted an eyelid.”
She explained that the reason why Ludlow Cookshop has changed address is because there are building developments taking place in Pepper Lane which she and Sebastian predicted would be “hugely disruptive” to their footfall. “And,” she commented, “as Tower Street is one of the more popular routes into Ludlow from the main car parks and train station, it was a stroke of luck to be selected from a long list of potential tenants by our kind landlady”.
She described the moving process itself as “happy chaos: we had customers in, stepping over the boxes and debris, and they were able to find most of the items asked for. We also had customers making sure we were ‘the ones from Pepper Lane’ as they were not going to shop with any opposition.
“We have been very touched by such fierce loyalty,” she added. “Here in Ludlow, we network rather than covet trade – and if we haven’t got it, we send them [shoppers]elsewhere. It works in reverse and is a refreshing and rewarding approach to take; people visit Ludlow partly for its old-fashioned values.”
