Merry Christmas to all our customers! (and Ria has a rant about shopping local)

As Christmas approaches, we miss the bustling excitement of our retail shop, the regulars popping in with cards and muffins, the parents buying for their kids and the people paying a tenner a week to buy their husband a new guitar. We think about how hard we worked to give a better service than amazon, or Asda (not hard) and think about how much we invested in customers being happy with their purchases.

Our retail shop is gone now, while we personally are doing much better running the hire, repair and sales from home, at this time of year, you can’t help but miss the human interaction and the pleasure from giving people what they need and of working hard on your feet all day.

So, a little plea…If you still have presents to buy for Christmas, please think about who you spend your money with. Who are you feeding? What are you feeding? Because, we are all voting with pound notes on what sort of world you want to be a part of and want in the future. (cheesy but true)

We go into a shop and see something we like, but we are savvy, we can probably get it cheaper online. We can probably get it from Amazon, (who don’t pay the UK tax they should, or value their staff) we can probably get it from a box shifter abroad who doesn’t understand what they’re selling so can’t advise you on it. But IS it cheaper? Really? Or are we forgetting about VALUE.  When you buy from a local business, you are supporting an industry who needs and appreciates you. Your money takes the form of small salaries and shop fronts, it pays for someone to be at the end of the phone if you have a problem. It often pays for better quality. Valuing those things in my opinion, is savvy. We are lucky enough to live somewhere with a butchers, a bakers and little shops, when you shop with them you say that’s how you want your town to look. When you shop with the big supermarkets, and big boys of the online type, you are saying that’s how you want the world to look… Warehouses, box shifting, personality devoid experiences. 

 

We can’t any longer offer you the experience of walking in to a shop and trying our stuff out, we can’t offer you a coffee and a way of paying slowly so that it works for you. But there are some people out there who haven’t yet been squashed by Asda selling their products at half the price and quality, or amazon sellers selling things for less than trade. Support them. There is nothing better for a small shop owner than a good Christmas, one that sets them up for the quiet period in spring, allows them to not fear the bills coming in and allows them to expand, be better and dream bigger. 

We wish you all a merry, savvy, buying period and thank whole heartedly those people who always ‘got it’ and helped us hang around for a lot longer than most music shop owners in the area and country did when the recession hit. We appreciated it hugely. We also appreciate those who still remember us for the things we can still provide, for calling us for PA and instrument repairs and hire, keeping Dan busy with the sound or DJ gigs and we’re loving that so many are still calling us for PA design and installation. We’ll continue to always do our best to provide you good value for your money and a service you can rely on.

Merry Christmas.