KIRSTY ALLSOPP RANT

(so soon in the New Year – we thought Matt might manage to wait until at least…February?!)

Have just seen the trade catalogues for the forthcoming Interiors Spring Fair at the NEC. I note that Kirsty

Allfluff is being lauded as TV presenter, craft and property expert and will be taking questions in two Q&A sessions covering craft tips. If Kirsty’s TV shows are anything to go by, she will have a team of experts ready to answer any tricky questions. Getting craft experts to show her how they do things does not make her an expert. I have a neighbour who is a pilot. I talk to him a lot when out walking our dogs. It doesn’t mean I could fly an airbus to Spain. I certainly couldn’t answer questions on navigation or thrust vectors. I might be able to tell you how to inflate a life jacket…which I suspect is about the level of Allfluff – she certainly blows enough hot air!

NEW IMAGERY?

We would quite like to get Olive, the workshop Labrador, involved in the online photography…we haven’t mentioned this to Dan and Julia yet, but Olive seems up for it and we have been trying to train her to balance things on her head – perhaps not so much furniture, but maybe the odd, small non-delicate, non-food err….thing..

Maybe we should just arrange things around her when she’s asleep (95% of the time).

WHY ARE WE CLOSING OUR ‘REAL’ SHOP?

This is the question we keep getting asked and as we haven’t had a proper rant for a while….here we go!

For a while, we have been losing trade to the internet. For example, we have noticed that on deliveries we will ask a homeowner, as we wheel in their purchase, where they got that lovely cupboard in the hall, or that painting on the wall. The answer is never an actual shop, it’s always “oh, we saw that on the internet”. We have no problem with this, but our footfall has dropped and as a bricks and mortar business we have to pay the government tax on everything – tax on air, shoe leather, talking to customers, not talking to customers, sunshine, rain, ideas, dreams, random thoughts etc. It just goes on and on.

However, the internet seems free of all these taxes, plus we don’t need fire inspection; electrical safety compliance; insurance in case someone sues us for getting dust on their skins. We don’t have to pay business rates, we don’t need to have a licence to pay music for customers and we don’t have to clean the shop or clean up sticky, sweety finger marks left by lovely children.

Sadly, however much we love our shop and, if we could ban the internet, raise the VAT barrier and make business rates realistic then we would carry on trading at Burwash Manor. But we are where we are, so please support our growing online shop and as a reward we will open our lovely old workshop several times a year for general browsing, rummaging, poking and fiddling – all the stuff that makes shopping interesting.

GOING ONLINE...

Work caries on apace to get the online shop fully stocked. We still have quite a bit of gear waiting to be tastefully photographed, logged and put on the internet which always seems to take longer than anticipated. I’m also going to have to build more backdrops to keep the shots interesting and perky. Dan & Julia (www.mackandme.com), the photographers, however, are doing a grand job and are staying relatively calm with the constant “err….could you just re-photograph that with the thing, maybe across the other, and the bit a different way round” etc. etc. 

IT'S THIS WEEKEND!

Having slept on it, I realise that mention of a stuffed boar head wasn’t very ‘Christmassy’ although I could equally have said that our 5foot battleship now has fairy lights!

There are some beautiful and very different festive goodies to see, such as a large ‘ROBIN STARCH’ enamel sign or a beautiful chalk ware statue of someone…err…religious.

And this weekend there’s our very own recipe mulled wine, mince pies (thanks, Mum!), fairy cakes AND we may even put on some Christmas music…but that’s still up for ‘debate’ amongst ourselves….

CHRISTMAS!

Well – we’re set up for our Christmas Launch weekend. Lots of lovely displays for you to come and look at…although we still haven’t found a suitable party hat for our new taxidermy addition – a boars head!

HAS OLD FURNITURE BECOME LIKE SAND?!

We recently ‘pitched out’ at an Antiques Fair and took a lot of our large furniture to sell there. Having been unable to sell an early Victorian Flame mahogany linen cupboard in the shop I was dismayed that we only achieved £150 at the fair – 10 years ago it would have been £1,000 no problem!

And, at that price, large brown furniture has become like a large bag of sand. It has no real inherent value. It’s a case of how much it costs to move and store, not what it is actually worth. The sad thing is, even at £150 we made a small profit because the dealer we bought it from couldn’t afford to store it!

It’s been predicted for years, but the market for some types of furniture has now collapsed, in terms of traditional retail. This is sad because a large volume of Victorian furniture is now almost certainly destined for landfill.

Here at Nest we have decided it is now economic suicide to handle large brown furniture – see you at IKEA!