Bath shop closure

After 2 years we finally decided that the Bath shop just wasn’t viable. Once I looked at the figures it wasn’t actually a hard decision to make. If anything it was a relief to make the decision because now we can move on and get Bristol and London on track and make them work harder. It’s a funny thing running an almost social enterprise business (but not). We have ‘grand illusions’ about promoting fair trade and organic non food products, and thereby making a real difference, yet the bottom line ‘profit’ is, at the end of the day, what we have to listen to, or rather is what the bank manger makes us listen to.

We will close the door to customers on the 30th of June and hope to have everything out of there as soon as possible afterwards as we will have to pay rates until the unit is empty. Bath council have a lot to answer for – we will only get 3 months rates free then will have to pay 50% of the rates until we assign the lease. Lets all pray that we assign the lease quickly. Fortunately there are not many empty units on the street at the moment so that is in our favour. Also the shop is well decorated so that will help.

It’s funny that originally we anticipated Bath being a better store than Bristol. In theory Bath is an ideal place for a shop like BORN; Green council policies, affluent people, highest percentage of paid off mortgages in the UK, ABC1 profile of customer, but they just weren’t coming through our doors. The regular customers we had were great, there just weren’t enough of them.

After a year the Stoke Newington shop is doing almost as well as Bristol. With some more networking and promotion I’m sure it will overtake it soon!