Interview with Andersons of Durham

1.What made you decide to pursue a career in fashion and open a clothes shop?

It’s a family business which we owned a shoe shop in the indoor market before and they had that for 30-40 years and I came in sort of 10 years and a lot of the shoe brands started doing clothing in particular a brand called Durberry who started doing all the clothing. We tried it in the indoor market but because some of the tweed are like £400 for a coat it was a bit wired. Although people would pay £200 for a pair of shoes which is generally our price people struggled to pay beyond that and struggled to pay for clothing in the indoor market but also there is a lot of eateries upstairs with tweet its soaks the smells up so we knew there was an interest there but it’s probably was not the right location/ environment. We need a shop which can just let people walk in, its needs to be dressed up so much more for the price that we sell our stock.

2.How long has your shop been in business?

Shoes have been like I say they probably been knocking on about 40 years and this is just our second year so the first year was very tough. We learnt a lot of lessons that clothing is a totally different from shoes, total different way of buying clothes seem to have lots of different seasons whereas shoes very alternative autumn- winter- spring- summer of sale. When we started visiting different distributes they showed you mid seasons collections as well. It just shakes it up a bit, but when you think your finished paying autumn/ winter clothes they introduce a whole new collection. So what we tent to do now is we changed our tactic completely and we buy in a lot smaller different collections. The shop changes every 2 weeks so its keeps it interesting to me as if you got regular customers coming in from Durham they want to see something different that justifies some of the higher prices.

3.What brands are the best sellers in your shop?

It depends on the time of year. So spring/summer you really don’t buy expensive clothes and a lot of the time people buy throw away fashion in spring and summer and they go to new look, Primark. Things like that you just think it’s only a couple of quid just buy it. So your market does not really change and you keep your core costumers but many people won’t pay £70 for a designer shirt they still a small few though but not enough. So our jewels is a good summer seller. They quite reasonable clothing at reasonable prices. People don’t mind paying that in autumn/ winter as people invest in clothes so they do not mind paying £300 for a wax jacket or you know they know that s going to last. So Barber, Daubery all of these are really good.

4.Over time has there been any changes to the brands that you sell?

Yes sure, I just looked at the spring/summer sales over the winter. So it would be similar sort of ball game but it not at all. So this spring/ summer we bought a third of stock of what we bought last spring/summer so we really cut down on our inventory so it total different ballgame and that was a massive learning cure for me but we now we are in the second year its getting a bit better. You can see a pattern. Shoes are really easy as we have done them for so long. Whereas this was just totally brand new.

5.Whats your favourite brand?

my favourite brand out of the whole shop is Aigle which is French and it just got a little bit different generally they more in the store around autumn/ winter then there is in spring/ summer again but everything you buy that’s Aigle generally has fabulous wonderful traits to it. So the trainers I got on are Aigle and the insole inside are really think and soft so they really comfortable and these little bit on the back are leather and they got really good tread so you always find that whatever you buy from them from a coat or trainer is always like the best quality you can get coats will be fully water proof fully wind proof. Some of them are full duck downing. There like luxury they all really nice.

6.Do you get more male or female shoppers?

In the spring/summer it’s more females just I think we go into a shop and you see something you absolutely love you got to buy it. It’s like that instance reaction that you love it and you want it. Whereas guys are very much driven by the weather. It has to be physically snowing or chucking it down with rain or you know have to forgotten there shorts to come in and buy another pair of shorts. They’re very few that are kind of fashion ordinated and you know want to come in every week or month and update their wardrobe there just very much driven by seasons so again autumn/winter probably equal to ladies if not a little bit more spring/summer for sure ladies that’s why the majority of the shop at the moment kind of leans itself more to the ladies we try and put of back on the men and offer more on the ladies side of things.

7.Do you sell more stuff online or in the shop?

Wee the web site totally male ordinated really so this pretty much connects to the shoe shop so that different again it’s kind of like having 3 different businesses. So the web site is total different to what’s on the shop floor in the indoor market. We just pick from this selection from a cater log. I could not afforded to stock every single style out there and vice versa. We pick about 20 shoes which we think are there best sellers and we change that every season as they bring out new ones every season. The shoes on the front look like a good seller as they have it as there front cover image so we change them every season to different ones. Sometimes the shop can be really quite to really busy. So all three of them all get good amount. But come to Christmas. All three of them are mental, crazy it’s a wonderful time.

8.Do you have a certain way that you set up your shop?

Well really Shelly got a lot to do with that more than I do. That’s what I pay her for, her professional and her experience in where she worked before. So she been taught how to put collections together and how to merchandise them together so from her experience that’s why the shop looks the way it does and it does take a certain magic touch and you really have to be trained in it.

9.Where do you see the shop and Durham shopping area in 10 years?

Hopefully I see the shop that somebody has bought me out. Bought the whole business and then I can retire early. I like to think that Durham will reinvest back into the city itself but at the moment it does not feel very passionate that they’re going to that. They try and charge you at every single turn. There meant to charge you as you go through the city centre, congestion charge, car parking so expensive so for me and my customers if you like that come into the shop. Why would they pick here appose to metro centre that free parking. Small city centres got to invest back into themselves if they’re going to survive they got to look at ways to get shoppers into town and fro independent to survive as if you look around there only probably 4-5 on sadder street that are independent all the rest are chains. So there not many small people left anymore and that’s the sole reason as we don’t get much help. So I don’t look at it very favourable weather that’s Durham or not I don’t know.

10.How do the people of Durham react to the shop in general?

Really positively actually we have some fabulous customer there actually gorgeous people they generally love the fact that you’re an independent and they want to support your small family business and they love the customer service, they love the fact that we know about the product and get excited and passionate about it. You love it and that’s why you must have it. We pride ourselves in customer service I’m sure there the odd one that might be disgruntled but then that just the way life goes. You can’t please everyone. Yeah just generally some really nice family that come in time after time. Our new shop till system stores people data so if we wanted to do say a 15% of tea and cupcake promotion day we got all the addresses of all the costumers so we can literally just quickly design something print off all the address and label and stick them into envelopes and send them. And that works really well because I think people are getting really sick of email, junk mail, automated phone calls where you don’t get to speak to anybody people are so sick of that treatment that they love the fact that if they call us they get through to somebody straight away and we know what we are talking about. So yeah we have some really nice people and especially people parents who are coming to drop their kids in uni. So they come for the first time in they come in and say hello and get to know them and they might buy something and then there after whenever they come in to visit the kid the next 4-5 years they always come back to the shop. They might be from all over the place but they still come back time after time to say hello and say hi to binky. So the web site that dose rely on email address so we probably have 20 thousand emails ad-on there as it’s been going for like 12-15 years and that’s main way of contact but people choose and select to be part of this data base on the web site. So I would never email someone if they have not gave me promotion or showing interest in the product as there no point if I sent them an email as it would spam my email I then would get a bad rating on the software I use to send the email out so it kind of like say if I get another one of these they will suspend my acc for 10 days so there not much point. So when ever in the shop there are people that ask to be on the data we ask for their email and send them an invite.