Sarah Clark, shopkeeper at The Sheep Shop, explains why the business should win the marketing and PR category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
The Sheep Shop is a wool shop in Cambridge tucked into a residential side street, so we need to be creative to get people to know about us. Our customers are our biggest treasure: they have an enormous repository of knowledge and bountiful goodwill. This year we’ve tapped into that and turned the tables on the traditional roles of shopkeeper and customers at special events.
Both events resulted in the shop being featured in the local press and national knitting magazines, led to new customers - and very happy customers - and to some of our busiest days (and best sales).
Yarn Shop Day is a national initiative – a day of events to encourage people to shop in their independent high street wool shops rather than buying online. Ours was unusual in that we invited our customers to become class teachers for the day, holding informal mini-workshops in yarn-related crafts.
People volunteered themselves to share their skills for free (though all volunteers got a present) in the crafts of tatting, macrame and spinning. Our teachers also volunteered, giving a talk on the design process for a knitting pattern and a walk-through using a huge knitting website.
Following the success of that we organised Yarn Swap Day, allowing customers to sell their surplus yarn to other customers in the shop. Sellers got their money back as gift vouchers for The Sheep Shop, which will encourage them to come back.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
