Behind the counter

OPEN ALL HOURS

Shopfront Studio began in Brighton in 2005 with an old off-licence, a neon OPEN sign and an interest in the people who decide to make something of their own.

I was studying Visual Communication and living in a former off-licence on the seafront. The shop had long since stopped selling anything but became an unofficial studio of sorts: somewhere to make things, put on exhibitions, host performances, invite people in and explore an idea that kept cropping up in my work –
the relationship between creativity, commerce and place.

For my degree show, I took over an old newsagent's stand and commissioned a neon OPEN sign.
The fascination with shopkeeping stuck.

The good independents

I have always liked businesses where you can feel the hand of the person behind them. A shopkeeper who knows their stock inside out. A restaurant that has considered everything from the typeface on the menu to the weight of the glassware. A florist who can tell you where the branches came from. A maker who has spent 20 years getting very good at one particular thing.

The best independent businesses tend to have this quality. There is judgement behind them. Taste, knowledge, experience and a point of view show up in hundreds of small decisions – often ones the customer barely notices. They also do something important for the places around them.

A good butcher, bookshop, bakery, gallery or café gives you a reason to walk down a particular street. Independent businesses create work, pass on skills, occupy old buildings, support other local businesses and provide the places where people routinely bump into one another.

A busy high street has a particular energy to it. Empty windows have one too.

Shopfront has always been interested in that territory: creativity, commerce and community, and what happens when the three are taken seriously.

Learning from both sides of the counter

Before running my own business, I spent several years working across consumer insight, brand, content
and communications with organisations including The Future Laboratory, the Financial Times and The
School of Life. At The Future Laboratory, much of my work involved taking changes in how people were living, spending and thinking and asking a practical question: what might this mean for business?

I spoke about those ideas with teams inside large organisations, as well as students, educators and independent businesses. The scale changed considerably; many of the underlying questions didn't.

Who are your customers becoming? What do they value? What are they struggling with? What might they want next? And how should a good business respond?

I became particularly interested in what smaller businesses could borrow from larger ones. Not the enormous budgets, layers of approval or 84-page strategy decks. The useful bits.

Research. Curiosity. A clear point of view. Understanding your audience properly. Paying attention to cultural shifts. Being deliberate about how a business looks, sounds and behaves.

Independents have plenty to offer in return.

They tend to be closer to their customers. They can experiment. They can change their minds. They can know the provenance of what they sell and the name of the person buying it. A decision made on Tuesday might actually be in the window by Wednesday.

There is something to learn from both.

Making something of your own

In 2017, I established my own independent creative practice and began spending much more of my time on the other side of the conversation. Over the years I've worked closely with founders across flowers, food, interiors, property, retail and the creative industries. The finished thing might be an identity, a website, photography, a piece of print or a campaign.

But I've come to realise that some of the most useful work happens before anything is designed.

Usually it begins around a table.

What are you making? Why this? Why now? Who is it really for? What do you do particularly well? What have you been doing simply because that's how you've always done it? What could be better?

There is a pleasure in helping someone see their own business clearly.

Sometimes the answer is a new identity. Sometimes it is better words, a simpler website or a more useful way of communicating with customers. Occasionally the most useful thing is deciding not to make something at all. The work is different every time, but the aim is fairly consistent: to help good independent businesses become more themselves, rather than more like everyone else.

The reality behind the shopfront

Running a business of my own has made me wary of advice that assumes an unlimited supply of time, people and money.

Independent business is rather more resourceful than that.

I've been the creative director, copywriter, photographer, web designer, marketer, salesperson, bookkeeper, IT department and person making the tea – sometimes in the same afternoon.

I've learnt software because paying somebody else wasn't an option. I've marketed the business while doing the work the marketing brought in. I've chased invoices, changed direction, made mistakes, had good years and difficult ones and occasionally started again.

That experience has changed the way I work with other founders.

The question isn't only whether an idea is good. It is whether it can actually be done – and whether doing it will make the business better. I'm interested in anything that helps with that.

New tools and AI are making capabilities available to independents that would once have required considerably larger teams and budgets. That's exciting. But the question I'm most interested in remains a practical one:

Is it useful?

Technology changes. Good judgement still matters.

Still open

Twenty years after that Brighton off-licence, Shopfront is still looking at many of the same things.

Interesting businesses. Good shopkeeping. Changing consumer habits. Useful technology. Thoughtful design. People who know their craft. Places worth making a detour for. Founders who have found a better way of doing something.

It is part journal, part working studio and part ongoing conversation about what makes an independent business worth returning to.

Some of what appears here comes from years spent working with larger organisations. Some from running my own business. Much of it comes from conversations with shopkeepers, makers, founders and people who have quietly become very good at what they do.

Small businesses don't need to behave like big ones. But they deserve the same quality of thinking. And the good ones have rather a lot to teach us in return.

Come on in…