AIBU to want to give it all up and start a shop on the Main Street in our village.

[Plumviolet]

Sitting here listening to all the doom and gloom on the radio about brexit and the cliff we are all going to fall off in a few months and it’s got me dreaming of a life reboot.

I’m returning to work after a maternity and I just can’t face the horrendous commute, full time away from the kids, au pair/full time nanny taking all my income and the day to day drudgery of working in a soul destroying office job for someone else to profit. (And I’m likely to lose my job anyway if all the hype is for real).

I live in a lovely little town around 30 minutes from Belfast. We still have a busy Main Street where people do actually shop still as we are remote enough.

AIBU to want to pack it all in and open a little shop?

I have a fairly major problem though... I don’t know what to sell. In your dream country village what shops would you like to see?

I know starting a business and getting it profitable is a hard slog but at least it will be for me. We’re all going to have to buy local as we won’t be able to afford to import things anyway!

I did it.

We opened a bookshop in our small market town, and two and a half years on, we’re doing fine.

The good feedback we’ve had is based on our knowledge and customer service. We’ll go the extra mile to source books for people, and we offer free next day delivery for most titles.

People come to us for recommendations, and they seem to like that. It’s lovely to stand and talk about books all day!

One of our outskirt tiwnsc has a shop with lots of small shops in it. And I mean small I. E a few shelves. It's a boutique shop. In it theres

Handmade soaps
Handmade jewellery
Pre loved baby clothes
Knotted baby clothes and blankets
Nail bar
Arts and crafts
Handmade gifts
A lego mini figures shop
Etc
I know when they advertised opening it was £5 per outlet per week.
Its always got a good flow of people.

I go there for the bath bombs as ds for some reason loves them
And I loved the knitted items for dd

Oh well no-one knows what an eco shop is I did ask.

We have a coffee/tea/bookshop in Conwy, it is always heaving. They also have a resident cat. You can browse the papers, get a book, have a coffee/tea/cake/light meal in the shop or take it out.

Gift shops come and go, usually in the night.

I guess a lot depends on what’s already there. E.g. a pottery studio might not work so well if there’s already one or two in the same town.

But in the largish village near me with shops, discounting cafes / takeaways, the ones that have been going for at least a few years include;

Sweet shop
Pet shop
Boutique (which is always deserted whenever I walk past)
Card / gift shop
Hardware shop

Having worked in one I’d go for a sweet shop if your main st doesn’t have one already. If there are any schools locally you’ll be busy every morning and hometime and there’s so many occasions throughout the year that you can sell seasonal stuff as well - Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Mothers/Fathers Day, party bags, end of year teacher sweets etc etc.

Are you keen on arts and crafts?
There's a very successful pottery painting studio in a tiny shop here. They run craft clubs, ladies' nights, paint with Father Christmas etc and visit schools and groups. It's always busy, especially when the weather's wet, people book a 2-hour slot and once they there, they stay and spend.

there's a shop in my town that sells fabric, haberdashery stuff including loads of very unusual buttons. they have a small cafe section too and run classes to make simple clothing items. The staff are super helpful and give advice and tutorials, they have a few rails of unusual clothes and make and sell jewelry quite cheaply. some of the stuff is bought from china and sold at really affordable prices, there are lots of lovely things to browse through such as hair pins, tiaras and hair combs, earrings, brooches, ankle bracelets, rings, fancy cups and saucers, purses, belts and loads more, all so cheap and unusual that you feel you are getting a bargain, great for browsing as they add stock regularly and there are some lovely gift ideas, they wrap them for you too. cards and tags all sold too. As I say some is made there but some bought on e bay from china and sold at a profit.

I lived in a village that once had lots of shops and a school. Only One of a couple of pubs now remains. The next village had a busy bakery, expensive farm shop, couple of small convenience shops. I would suggest that you would be competing on price with big super markets and on line shops. You would need to investigate your opening hours and holiday/sickness cover. You could offer to be a shop that accepts parcel delivery for on line purchases. It sounds like hard work to me, but you would probably be an asset to your community.