i'm Mary's eldest son, Grahame.
i'd like to take some time and share my experience of refurbishing and revitalising our shop here in Edinburgh. I hope it can give you some useful tips that may come in handy for you all.
a little background
we have been in business since 1991, FATG registered since then too.
originally my mother worked at home, part time, while my brother and i were at school. In 1997 she realised that the business was expanding too much for her to continue working from home,
so, Blackhall Framing Gallery was born, situated in an old bank, on the main road between Edinburgh and the Forth Road Bridge.
Business was steady at first then began to grow, and we coped with an average week turnaround, and 2 part time staff members, and my mother full time. and so it continued until early last year sometime. (i was down for Easter Break from University
Setting foot off the bus, (bus stop right outside) i realised that the fascia was tired, and too hidden, the interior was tired and inadequate for the task of choosing framing, (design area was at a south facing window). We most certainly weren't making enough of our location. we had also diversified too much, into ornaments, Jewellery, Craft Kits, Craft materials, Cards etc. this photo perhaps will give you an idea of what the shop looked like before
So i decided pretty much there and then something had to change, but i knew being a small business cashflow is always tight.
i came up with an action plan to return to our core business, Framing
I designed a massive 16ft*5ft central island design area for our picture framing, with a 6*5 ft main surface area, and a pillar at one end with two sellwyns moulding display panels either side, built in storage cupboards, etc. All singing all dancing, and two people can serve at once. - this makes an impression on you as soon as you walk through the door.
we repainted all the interior wood from their horrible black gloss which had been the same since 1997 and invested heavily on more interior lighting, to make the place brighter.
We also had a major declutter, all the ornaments got passed on to a charity store, we lost some card stands. and we lost a few free standing Slatwall Units in favour of decanting the ready made frames onto the slat wall which adorned the walls already. basically the whole place has been opened up to feel airier and a much nicer comfortable place to spend time in and choose your framing.
a major improvement was adding Estlite - John, you've done wonders for us with this package. also, when we have enough money scraped together PreView will be getting added.
Outside, we changed the fascia colour, from Burgundy red, with gold letters to a nice Royal Blue with a Massive Sign, that just stated who we were, none of the nonsense we had on the windows before stating we sold originals, prints, art cards, and artist materials.
( I hated how we were always reffered to as "The Art Shop" by locals, just because it was above the door we sold art materials.)
Before ( sorry, only picture i could find)
After, taken last night after going in to do some work, (cricket bats anyone?)
i've also added energy saving lights to the outside, (when it was dark we could never be seen before - Which made us less visible in the winter months).
Tomorrow morning i am going in to the printers to order a new freestanding pavement sign that holds A1 posters, so we can catch pedestrians unawares. ( our last one was a swing sign and it had a tendency to fly away in a small breeze) and also new business cards featuring the royal blue standard.
I'm not done yet, may more things i can do.
However, we have seen :
Increased footfall since the new signage was erected.
Lots of new customers coming in who haven't seen us before, even though we've been there for 10 years
an increase in demand for framing.
comments about how nice and welcoming the shop is.
anyway i could go on and on, and i'm sure you guys are fed up of hearing about our shop. its fast approaching bed time for me.
i'll leave you with a few words of wisdom, - declutter, don't diversify too much, make the most of your fascia, and above all have fun!
hopefully i can provide more pictures of what the place looks like inside, unfortunately the digital camera is locked up in the shop overnight, and if i go in i'll only end up doing some framing.
thanks for listening to me.
Grahame
