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00:00With Small Business Saturday approaching, the news visited the bookshop in Leon the Solent, one of the oldest bookstores on the south coast.
00:07Sarah Burrows took on the shop in 2018 and was soon faced with a Covid lockdown and a cost of living crisis that meant they had to think outside of the box in order to survive.
00:16So we started a book subscription and people pay £12 a month and they get a box every month.
00:23They don't know what book they're getting. It's a surprise. And then we meet up on the third Monday of the month and talk about it, whether it's good or bad.
00:31And that really has been our bread and butter money over the last three years.
00:36After that year with Covid, we actually did quite well. The shop kind of flourished. People wanted to keep small businesses alive.
00:45And we're quite lucky in Leon the Solent. We're quite a unique high street of about 70 independent businesses.
00:51And our local community really want to keep those open. So, yeah, and I think that's why that Covid made that shift.
01:01People were going back to bike riding, letter writing, you know, shopping local for veg and meat.
01:08And it just, yeah, it did really well. But slowly over the last three or four years, it's just been terrible.
01:14Retail, especially the last two years, has just been awful.
01:18The subscription boxes have allowed us to have an income coming in the background if nobody comes into the shop.
01:25The same as I've tried to do a lot of things working with schools, we've tried to do a lot of events.
01:30We've tried to be and think of really unique things that we can do that Amazon can't because they're our biggest problem.
01:39And just try to do everything we can in the local community to keep us at the front of people's minds.
01:45But you still can't physically drag people off the street and come in and shop in your shop, which is, you know, the biggest problem, really.
01:54Yeah, it's always like talking about Covid, I know it's a few years ago now, but there was always that kind of, I'd say that community feel almost came out of it.
02:01Yeah.
02:02Things are going to be different, but from your experience, have they kind of gone back to how they were before?
02:06Yeah.
02:07Or maybe even worse than what they were?
02:08Yeah, definitely. Because obviously after that, we were hit with the cost of living crisis.
02:12And we've seen that obviously reflected. I had to get a second job.
02:16I find that to keep the shop going, I find that my wages on Friday now, I transfer into the bookshop's bank account to keep it going so that I can pay the bills and the things that are owed.
02:28We've done a few things in the shop to like really try and keep the community engaged.
02:34So we've got like a literary project. We work with a couple of local charities like Sophie's Legacy, Hampshire Food Revolution.
02:41We work with a number of schools.
02:44We've got a donate-a-box. It's not really a charity, but we've got a donate-a-box scheme that we do.
02:52And if schools or anyone local or even care homes have phoned us and said, we've got someone who's going through a really bad time, you know, they really would like a box.
03:02We've got people donate them. We keep that on file and then we donate those boxes to people who need them.
03:10They're anonymous. They don't know who sent them to them. And that's just something that's really nice.
03:15We've got a pay it forward scheme in the shop. People round up their change or they'll donate a fiver or just whatever they can.
03:24We put a little tag on the board and then anyone that's shopping in the shop, if they pick up a full price book and they can't quite afford it because it's too expensive,
03:33they might go and take like a two pound tag off of the board so that they can make that purchase for that book and effectively not kind of pay full price for it.
03:43So, yeah, that works really well. That's an excellent scheme that we've got.
03:49Yeah, perfect. You do seem to kind of have quite a few community initiatives.
03:53Yeah, we like to keep that focus with them because we've got such a loyal community in Leigh.
04:01People do go to the butchers for their meat and to the bakery for their bread.
04:07And before Leigh Fruit and Veg closed, they'd go there and get all their veggies rather than go in to the co-op or Tesco's or somewhere.
04:15So, yeah, we are quite lucky in that respect, our high street. And I think that's why there are very few empty closed shops.
04:24And if we do get a shop that close, it reopens again very quickly.
04:28I think Small Business Saturday is obviously there to highlight small businesses.
04:33And of course, we as small businesses completely understand that it's not always affordable to shop local.
04:41But if everybody could just spend a fiver or there's another scheme called just a card, if you just buy a card, you know, it's like donating to your favourite charity.
04:51If everybody could do that, it makes a huge difference.
04:54I think small business owners, we don't do this to be millionaires. We do this because we enjoy it.
05:00We like the interaction with the local community and we want to keep the shop open.
05:04We're not trying to make money. And I think that's the big difference.
05:08You know, there is a certain billionaire that has made a lot of money. He doesn't need any more.
05:13So if, you know, just one purchase over Christmas make a world of difference to all the small businesses, not just in Leigh, but everywhere.
05:24.