We went down to Unitom to talk to manager, Tim, about what the store offers to the people of Manchester, as well as finding out why a visual arts bookshop does some of the best coffee in Manchester.
00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name is Theo Hewson-Beds and today I'm outside Unitom
00:04in the northern quarter as part of our look at some of the city's best independent creative
00:09businesses. Today I'm going to go in there and I'm going to talk to Tim, the manager and buyer
00:13here, a little bit about the store, what makes it special and why Manchester is the right place
00:18for a creative hub such as this. My name is Tim Bell, I'm the buyer and manager at Unitom.
00:24Okay, so Unitom is primarily a visual arts orientated bookshop. We've been open for just over three
00:32years now. A big part of our ethos is being a bit of a cultural hub for Manchester so people
00:38can come and explore, be inspired creatively. A big part of that is also encouraging our
00:45customers to put their work out there in the physical realm as well. It's really important
00:49for us to be able to present local artists' work, small emerging artists' work alongside
00:56those big coffee table, huge publishers. It's great for us to be able to put someone's first
01:02little zine on a shelf alongside a big Tashian monograph about Helmut Newton or something.
01:07I think Manchester's got a really rich sort of cultural heritage spanning the spectrum
01:13of the arts. So, and especially here in the Northern Quarter, there's still a really strong
01:18sense of that artistic community and there's lots of small independents that nurture those
01:25new local talents. There's a real opportunity for people to put their work out there. There's
01:31lots of small great galleries and people can put in their own exhibitions. I see the publishing
01:37world, especially self-publishing, as a real opportunity for people to explore creativity.
01:43Put out new ideas. I worked for Magma at Manchester for a long time, almost 15 years just prior
01:51to its closure during Covid. We collaborated with some regular customers of Magma in the
02:00opening of this. And it's done really well for us. So, we're three and a half years in
02:04now and we're growing and doing more and experimenting with new things all the time. It was really important
02:11for us that it didn't just feel like a retail space. It felt like it was a space that people
02:17could come, people could meet, people could spend some time in here as a resource. And
02:22when we first opened, we offered a very simple coffee offering. It was just a batch filter.
02:28And it was just so we could offer something that might, you know, encourage people to sit in here a bit longer and have a
02:34drink whilst they browse the publications. And we now offer a range of espresso-based drinks. Our house coffee is with Dark Arts, which is a London-based
02:44drink. I know we are not a coffee shop, but I would boast that our coffee is comparable to a lot of the specialist coffee shops in Manchester.
