Category: Shop

Lockdown Stories: Earl of East

Lockdown Stories is a series of short interviews with creative entrepreneurs and businesses that have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Since its beginnings, the main goal of Future Positive has been to share inspiring projects happening all around the world and, during these strange and difficult times for independent businesses and creators, we want to continue providing support and visibility. If you’d like to be featured in this series, please get in touch at hello@thefuturepositive.com and tell us your story.

Earl of East
Lifestyle brand, started in 2014 by partners Niko Dafkos and Paul Firmin, with 3 multi-concept stores in London, alongside their own home fragrance, bath, and body line, which is manufactured in-house.
Location: London, UK
www.earlofeast.com

When did the lockdown start for you and how has your business been affected?

Things really start to change in early March. As Covid-19 began spreading worldwide, we first felt the effects in our flagship store in Coal Drops Yard, as footfall started to decrease. However, it was on the 19th of March when we made the decision to close the stores, just a few days before the official lockdown as we felt the need to protect our staff and customers.

All three store locations have been closed since, and as a result so has our program of workshops and events, which are a major part of our business. We have been able to continue with online, and with manufacturing, although on a much more reduced scale. We have since furloughed around 60% of the team, creating a skeleton team to ensure core functions continue.

Have you found any new ways of working or have come up with new product ideas during this time?

We were able to pivot quickly, firstly by reaching out to corporations we have worked with previously to create client care packages, and then in the creation of our virtual workshops which are hosted through Zoom. Not only did this allow us to keep the cash flowing it also gave Niko and I real purpose whilst everything began to take a turn for the worse in terms of the spread.

We have also become much more content focussed on our site, creating a series of content called Ritual over Routine and releasing interviews. We were actually working on both before this happened but it allowed us space to really focus on this new side of the business. Working with the skeleton team, and remotely in what is usually a very much hands-on business has been difficult, but we have a good team in place and daily check-ins and clear tasks have allowed for a new structure to develop. We have really had to rethink a working week and structure our days to always include work, it’s definitely a work/life integration over ‘balance’ but it’s allowing us to stay motivated in what could be a very depressing time.

We released a collaborative project with KayK goods which is a move to a new category, it wasn’t planned to be a digital launch but we wanted to stick to our time plan, and we created some nice content for the launch. In addition to this, we are currently developing a new line, so we have been able to focus on this, and extensions to our Japanese Bathing Line which has become a best-seller in the last year and has gained particular attention in the last few weeks. We are also in the middle of a project with an agency, which is really exciting.

What are some of the positive takeaways you have experienced during this time?

As a team, we have learned a lot and become stronger, I think this can only be viewed as positive. From a business owner standpoint, we have had to face challenges and overcome something unimaginable just a few months ago, you learn a lot through difficult times and I think it has helped us to look at our company again and redefine what is really important. We have seen which areas of the business need more focus, and which are working well. We have seen a lot of traction online and with our community, that has been really positive and something we want to continue to build on.

From a personal level, Niko and I only made this business our full-time jobs last September, after five years of it being our side-hustle. We had struggled to find a real pattern of work and this has given us the space to determine that, and our actual roles and responsibilities beyond just being founders. It has also given us space to dedicate some time to ourselves, to eating right and exercise, which are essential to long-term success in all areas of life.

How do you see your business evolving over the next few months?

It’s really hard to determine right now, but what we know is that our strategy is to protect what we have and build on the great customer base we have built in the past few years.

The new normal will certainly affect our stores, we are currently making plans to change the spaces and make sure they work well for social distancing and that our team are provided with the safest environment. The structure of our events will change for the foreseeable, and we see digital events still playing a part in that schedule moving forward.

Wholesale will change but we are unsure of the ways yet, having stockists worldwide has meant we have felt the effects at different times, we have also taken on new stockists during this time and have some exciting new projects in the works. In terms of digital, our focus will remain on becoming more content-driven, we are adding a lot of new products and categories to the site, and these will roll out in-store too. We also hope to release more new products.

April 28, 2020
Resident Store

Founded in 2015 James Borley and Greg Avis, Resident is a store bringing together a curated selection of homewares, accessories and grooming products from UK and international designers like Matia Mollenbach, Daniela Rubino and Louise Madzia. After its first location in London, Resident has just settled in a new home in Frome, Somerset.

We talked to James and Greg to find out more about what made them start their own shop, what customers can find at Resident and they’re plans for the upcoming months.

www.residentstore.co.uk

All photos by Resident.

You design your own lighting products as The Electrical Shop, what made you start a store selling other designers’ goods?

It was a very organic process. We started off making and selling lights and began to meet other designers and makers at events and markets who were doing a similar thing to us, but working with different products.

As a result, we started to build up a collection of really great stuff made by great people that we wanted to showcase, and so Resident was born.

Please give us an overview of what type of products visitors can find in Resident.

It’s very hard to pin down a certain type of product, but visitors can expect to find a carefully curated selection of homewares and accessories.

Everything from ceramics, tableware, books and magazines through to accessories, candles and chocolate! It’s a varied mix that we like to change up regularly.

What are the main characteristics a product must have to be stocked in Resident?

First and foremost we have to love the product! We also love to work with independent designers and makers based in the UK; but that does also extend to Europe and the US with some of the stuff we carry!

Essentially, if a product is well-made, well-designed and if the person who makes it gets what we’re trying to achieve with the store then that’s a pretty good start.

Tell us a little bit about the building where the shop is and the renovation plans for the upcoming months.

It’s Grade II listed townhouse originally built in the late 17th Century in the beautiful Somerset town of Frome. As well as being listed, we’re also in a conservation area so we are up against it somewhat with renovation plans!

We’re working with a great local architect (James Grayley Architects) to completely renovate the two floors above (where we live) and will finish by doing the same on the ground floor and eventually end up with a shop space twice the size it is now. This will allow us to not only expand our range, but also enable us to host events and workshops. Plus, we have a licence, so who knows what the future may bring!

You moved to Frome from London. Could you tell us a little bit about what visitors can find in the town?

Frome is a fantastically quirky place. One side is a slowly decaying 70s concrete shopping centre, whilst the other side is a very vibrant independent retail scene.

The local council has gone to great lengths to promote indie businesses by scraping business rates and helping to fund a mammoth monthly market (the Frome Independent) which takes over the town each month bringing around 10,000 people into the town.

Catherine Hill offers great shopping opportunities – alongside us there are menswear shops Assembly and Kushi Clothing, indie record shop Covers Vinyl and a myriad of vintage clothing shops. Plus there’s great coffee at Crocker and Woods and fantastic food at the River House and High Pavement Cafe.

June 27, 2016
Thisispaper Store

Thisipaper is a multidisciplinary design studio founded in 2011 and based in Warsaw. Working on different projects, ranging from graphic design and art direction to retail design and print publishing, Thisipaper have established themselves as one of the most exciting studios emerging from Poland.

You might know Thisispaper because of their magazine and nicely curated blog, but they also design their own bags, all made by hand in their workshop and using local materials. Until recently, all their products were only available through their online shop but now you can also visit their new space on Odolańska 6/8 in Warsaw.

The new store features a quiet and clean interior as a result of the transformation of a dental clinic from the soviet era and it is located just next to the studio. Apart from the Dieter Ram’s Braun Audio 1 Stereo which fills the interior with sound, the main element of the space is the wall-to-wall shelving system designed in collaboration with Polish design firm TYLKO and showcasing all of Thisipaper’s products.

www.thisispaper.com

Store images by Maja Wirkus
Product images by Max Zielinski

June 11, 2016
Arista

Arista is a project by mother and daughter duo Milagros Matos and Valentina Alvarado Matos. From Venezuela and Barcelona, Milagros and Valentina run this online store stocking unique creations by artisans from around the globe. We chat with them to find out more about how this interesting project started.

Could you please introduce yourselves and tell us about your backgrounds?

Milagros: I live in Venezuela and have always been surrounded by art and design in some kind of way. In the 60s, I lived in Europe for 10 years and worked in cinema and arts.

Valentina: I currently live in Barcelona and work in visual arts.

Tell us a little bit more about Arista. How did it all start?

Valentina: We, as a family, thought it would be a beautiful and intimate idea to start a project where objects and crafts were involved. It’s quite normal for me to think about my childhood and remember the African masks, huipil tunics from Guatemala and other traditional objects that my mom and dad had at home.

Milagros: As the name indicates, Arista seeks the intersection of different levels and in this particular case, disciplines. We love travelling and we consume culture and reflect this through the objects that we collect: handmade, unique editions of accessories, decorative objects and homeware.

How do you choose the artisans and products you sell in your store?

Valentina: We started with Venezuelan artisans for an obvious reason – it’s our land. We have always been in contact with wayuu artisans and are truly admirers of their hard work, colour palettes and ways of weaving, patterning and working. We also have a long research list for another destinations we’d like feature in our store in the future.

What are your favourite souvenirs from your trips?

Valentina: Definitely spices to cook – they are a must to take back with you when travelling. The fresh and carefully picked ras el hanout you can buy from a local market Morrocco, you’ll never find it in Barcelona. We also like to bring textiles with us from our trips.

What are Arista’s plans for the upcoming months?

Milagros: Keep on travelling in order to keep collecting folk treasures. We have like an anthropological object fetish: we travel, explore, talk and do research about certain cultures and their objects and we start thinking about including them in our catalogue. Also and most importantly, partnering with local artisans in order to make foundation projects for their communities. In this first case, with La Goajira in Venezuela.

May 23, 2016
The City Works

Founded in 2015 by Sylvia Moritz and Rowan Ottesen, The City Works is an urban-themed brand of stationery, gifts and souvenirs. Paying incredible attention to detail, Sylvia and Rowan create meticulous illustrations that tell the stories behind the cities they use for inspiration, providing unique designs in which you can get lost for hours.

We spoke to Rowan about the beginnings of The City Works, their design process and future plans.

www.the-city-works.com

What made you start The City Works? Could you tell us a little bit about your backgrounds?

Both myself and Sylvia Moritz studied design at Camberwell College of Arts. After graduating, we worked in a few design agencies while Sylvia grew a career in printmaking, featuring complex cityscapes.

We founded The City Works together with the simple principal to draw the world. We wanted to combine the unique intricacy of Sylvia’s ‘citysphere’ prints with our love for travel and our obsession with paper, to make more affordable merchandise that anyone who loves cities could enjoy.

Why did you decide to focus on an urban theme for all your products?

Cities are obviously fascinating places, that grow and evolve over time. They’re immensely diverse and complicated, populated by millions of people who each have their own story and reason for being where they are.

We think there is a charming complexity to cities, and it’s frustrating for many souvenirs to focus on the typical skyline of famous landmarks. No city is complete without it’s people. When observed from afar, every city is a beautiful, unique living fabric.

Your illustrations are full of intricate details. Please tell us about the inspiration behind them and the process you follow to create them.

Of course the intricacy lies in the fact that, no matter how many times you walk down a street, you can always see something new. Be it a person, a vehicle, a piece of graffiti, a strange colour combination, or a lost architectural style. The city is a massive collection of details, little inspirations that many people may miss as they walk down the high street on their phone.

To create our designs a vast body of research is needed to inform what are essentially hand-drawings. There is something about drawing the designs by hand before digitally rendering them that adds a necessary human character.

An important element of your products is that they combine traditional and contemporary production methods. Could you tell us a little more about this?

We describe ourselves partly as a contemporary souvenirs brand. We feel that giving our products a sense of place. where possible, makes them more meaningful, especially as personal mementos for yourself or loved one.

As lovely and nostalgic as traditional methods are, it’s sometime impractical, so we have suppliers with the technology to produce our digital and lithographic prints, as well as the white ink printing for our ‘A5 London Notebooks’.

Sylvia’s background and knowledge of printmaking means we still enjoy the rewarding side of making things ourselves. Every greetings card we make is individually hand-printed in house, the covers for our ‘Debossed Minibooks’ are hand-pressed with a mangle, and our notebooks are hand-sewn and trimmed.

It’s a labour of love that we would love to do forever. As The City Works moves from city to city the level of quality and attention to detail in everything we do will always be a priority.

London, Vienna, Bethlehem…where’s next?

There’s endless possibilities but we haven’t settled on one. It’s important to us that places we depict aren’t always mainstream tourist destinations. There are incredible parts of the world that maybe don’t get the attention they deserve, but maybe that’s they way it’s meant to be.

Right now our focus is developing new ideas and expanding and establishing our ‘Lost in London’ and ‘Free in Vienna’ collections in their respective cities, while making ‘Bethlehem’ available for the busy Christmas period.

We have been approached a couple of times about the possibility of Scottish cities, and with so much history, Scotland will be a place we study eventually. Bath is also a stunning place that we’ve been meaning to draw for a while. It’s a favourite of ours because it’s a world heritage site with an interesting colour palette. Just like any new collection, we want to try to take our time and do every city justice.

When we feel our company has grown to a certain point, we’d like to open up the location of our future collections to our customers, and allow them to vote for a place that they wanted to see ‘cityworked’. After all, they live there.

All photos courtesy of The City Works.

November 2, 2015