Cilla & Camilla: owner Richard Barker gives a fascinating insight into his five lifestyle businesses at Beaminster, Bridport, and Sherborne in West Dorset

‘We have a formula which works’

Richard Barker, owner of Cilla & Camilla in West Dorset, gives a fascinating insight into his business, which includes gift and homeware stores

My career has been primarily in multiple retailing - most notably, I guess, as sales director at Waterstones and managing director of Blackwell Retail. I was also network director at Post Office Ltd. Realising that I was living in a beautiful part of South West England with an equally beautiful partner and children but spending most of my days and nights in London, I gave that up and started Dorset Retail Ltd in 2011. My business partner, who is also the mother of our children, is Sally Ann Palmer. Her background was initially market research, and latterly arts management.

We have four shops and a cafe. Two are cook shops - which stray a little into homeware - in Bridport and Sherborne. Also in Bridport we have a gift and homeware store and, in Beaminster, a gift and homeware store which has a café and a women’s fashion department. Beaminster is overwhelmingly the largest store, accounting for roughly half of the business’ overall sales. Across the business, 40% of our gross sales are from gifts and homeware, followed by our cook shops (25%), greetings cards (15%), fashion (10%), and our café (10%).

Our shops are very deliberately in market towns where there’s a healthy mix of multiples and independents. The nearest major retail centres - Bath, Bristol, Bournemouth, and Exeter - are at least 60 minutes’ travel time away.

These affluent market towns tend to buck most retail trends. They have remained buoyant: there are very few empty units, and bricks-and-mortar retail holds its own against online. We don’t sell online at all - there is nothing we have which is exclusive, and there are many online retailers who can sell just what we might, but at better prices.

In each town, we aspire to trade from the very best sites available. We have achieved that in both Beaminster and Bridport. where our rental costs per sq m are the highest in these towns.

We have a lease break approaching in Sherborne and may take the opportunity to relocate.

“The most satisfying element of the business is finding a new product which is not obviously and immediately going to do well but then, with the right display, presentation and pricing, creating something which works really well”

Occupying these premium sites is a deliberate strategy - we view the premium rents we pay to be part of our marketing costs.

Our customers tend to be loyal and supportive of local businesses. We’ve got to know them pretty well. The benefit of all the shops being in West Dorset, and physically very close, is that our customers are largely similar in all four shops: different people but with similar characteristics.

They are female, aged between 35 and 75, relatively affluent, informed, and demanding customers who, if they get what they want - with the right level of quality service - are very loyal. And we see a lot of visitors to West Dorset and the Jurassic Coast.

We use social media regularly (Instagram, Twitter and Facebook) to keep our regular customers up to date, and to attract new followers. We do this in-house but are considering an option to give the business to a local agency.

We advertise in print media too – but only where we can take the front cover or inside cover. We use two local publications which are perfect for our customers: Marshwood Vale (monthly) and West Dorset News (fortnightly).

We’re very conscious that we stock almost nothing that anyone needs - our stock is simply stuff that people like, and want to own, or want to give as presents.

As such, we are competing with a huge range of other draws on our customers’ disposable incomes. So being accessible and high profile is important to us.

We attend Top Drawer and Home & Gift and

tend to pick up new ideas and products from those two shows.

Our greeting cards buyer attends Progressive Greetings Live most years, and our cook shop managers have attended Exclusively Housewares. We see a few very select reps/agents (just the people we enjoy seeing!). Our women’s fashion is bought from the wholesale arm of five brands: Joules, Seasalt, White Stuff, Thought and French Connection.

But probably our richest source of new products is other retailers. Wherever we are - in the UK or

abroad - we visit similar retailers to look at their stock and steal their ideas. One of our successes last Christmas was an unusual jigsaw of Dorset. I saw a couple of them tucked away in the back of a local bookshop. I’d never seen the product before and had never had contact with the supplier: a map specialist. With the supplier’s help - producing stock especially for us - we sold about 300 sets at £20 each in December alone.

With the gift and homeware ranges, we have some core suppliers which we have worked with pretty much from day one: St. Eval, Heathcote & Ivory, Biggie Best, LSA, La Rochère, Hot Tomato, Sophie Allport, Gisela Graham, The English Soap Company, Jellycat, Orange Tree Toys and others. We remain loyal to these suppliers and update our ranges in line with new products coming from them. On average I’d guess we drop six or seven suppliers each year and replace them with new ideas.

We buy from a core range of about 20 greeting cards suppliers and then expand the range with possibly another 20/30 suppliers which rotate to add interest for our customers.

We are also fortunate to have some really good local suppliers who we support whenever we can. They tend to be focused around greeting cards, toiletries, maps and books. About 5% of our overall gross sales comes from very local suppliers who have no ambition to sell more broadly.

We stock our shops heavily - probably going beyond what is strictly justified - but we like to show range and we like to give choice. ‘Abundance’ is a decent word to describe our buying and stock policy.

The most satisfying element of the business is finding a new product which is not obviously and immediately going to do well but then, with the right display, presentation and pricing, creating something which works really well (the jigsaw of Dorset, for example).

“Being accessible and high profile is important to us”

Looking forward

We have a formula which works. There are a couple of towns within 30 minutes’ drive where we have considered opening, but the right site has never been available. That said, we are not actively looking to open new space. We’re fortunate that we have a decent business which offers us a good standard of living while working less than full-time. We’re at the stage where to take on new space would require us to not just take on more risk, but to scale up a set of functions and processes which work pretty well as they are. Our focus will be on making the existing space work better and more effectively, rather than to open new space.

We’ve made very little adjustment to our buying in response to the cost-of-living increases. We’re noticing some impact, but nothing that is yet challenging the fundamentals of our business, which is pretty sound and resilient. We are probably buying a little more cautiously than in previous years, but not to an extent that our customers would notice.

We’re quietly confident about Christmas. We’re forecasting no increase over last year but, with careful management of costs, that is okay - and would be a decent outcome in the expected economic climate.

Top 10 Highest Volume Lines

1 St. Eval Bay & Rosemary candle tin 2 KitchenCraft BBQ utensils 3 Beaminster Ramblers

Beaminster Hills circular walks leaflet 4 Hot Tomato earrings 5 Tradestock La Rochère

Bee tumblers 6 Guzzini Feeling teaspoons 7 Rosie Made A Thing birthday cards 8 The famous Cilla &

Camilla Bacon Sandwich (bacon from locallyreared pigs on Evershot

Bakery bread) 9 Baboo Gelato Moroccan vanilla ice cream tub 10 Sam Cannon local greeting cards and prints