A popular alternative shop in Workington has been forced to close its doors due to the cost of living crisis.
Strange and Beautiful, owned by John and Aimee Hollingsworth, closed after 10 years of service due to rising costs.
The shop was originally based at 65 John Street, opposite Whelans Chemist, but moved to a bigger location on 33 Murray Road last year.
After the move, running costs continued to rise and the pair were forced to downsize – before announcing on Wednesday that they would be closing down the shop permanently.
Shortly after their announcement, followers of the page began to share the hashtag #savestrangeandbeautiful on Allerdale Borough Council and Workington MP Mark Jenkinson’s Facebook posts with the hopes of finding the shop a lifeline.
John said: “We’ve really had to close because people just haven’t got as much money to spend as they used to and we just couldn’t keep up with the bills.
“On a monthly basis just to keep the shop running it was about £4,000 and to put that in perspective our takings were about £1,500 to £2,000 a month, so we didn’t even have half the money to cover the bills. There was no way we could sustain that for a long period of time.”
John added that in particular, they were facing high business rates, rent and energy bills that were making it impossible for them to keep afloat.
He said: “It’s central government that set the business rates and that’s the issue at the moment. The council aren’t to blame, they’re not treating us any differently to anyone else, but that being said, there might be things they could do to help smaller businesses in the area.
“We assumed when we opened up in the new shop that we would be able to get the rates reduced as we were only using the bottom floor and we were in discussions about that for quite a while, so we ended up missing a few payments because of that.
“We’ve also been trying to get some help to pay the bills we have but its seems unlikely anything will come up now. We can’t move online with our stock as it won’t cover the money we owe and we’re at the stage of bailiff involvement now.
“If that didn’t happen, we would have tried to struggle on and downsize further, but we’re not going to be able to do that at the moment.”
In an attempt to try and keep the shop open, John and Aimee tried to raise money to cover the monthly costs by selling their own possessions and handcrafted jewellery.
A friend of the duo also started a GoFundMe to help save the shop by attempting to raise £6,000 to cover the shop’s debt.
John added: “The reason we have the shop is because there’s no others like it and we like the things we sell, so we did end up selling some of our own things and Aimee my wife makes and sells jewellery and that helped us a long a little bit, but it hasn’t been enough.”
As part of the shop, Strange and Beautiful also supported other small businesses by stocking their products, meaning a chain of other local businesses are affected by the closure.
John said: “My opinion is our drop in sales is because people are scared to spend money, if they have it, they keep it because they don’t know what is going to happen or they’re spending it all on food and electricity. We’re not the only ones going through this, there’s loads of shops closing down all around us in Workington, even the big chains like Debenhams.
“It’s a shame, it seems like the high street is going to be dead soon. It’s happened in Whitehaven and Maryport, they’re the two closest towns to us and their highstreets are abysmal. I think Workington is just going to go the same way, looking at what’s happening everywhere else anyway.”
Aimee and John have thanked people for their support on social media and hope to open a new business in the future.
