Community
Community by oXo Creatives.
oXo works with businesses in these places, and this is what is happening in them.
How a Somerset art gallery put Bruton on the map, and what it means for the shops next door
Hauser and Wirth Somerset has been open for over a decade. The interesting question for a small business on the high street is not that it draws visitors, but which visitors, and what they do once they arrive.
The Bruton farmers' market, and what it does for the shops around it
One Saturday a month, the town has a fixed reason for people to be there. That is worth more to the shops nearby than the market's own turnover.
Bruton's independent traders, standing together on the high street
A shared hashtag and a joint Instagram account will not save a shop on their own. What they do is turn a street of separate businesses into one thing a visitor can find and follow.
One weekend a year: what Glastonbury Festival is worth to Castle Cary
Castle Cary railway station is the closest mainline stop to Worthy Farm. For a few days each June, tens of thousands of people pass through a town most of them never stop in.
What Castle Cary's Market House says about investing in a town centre
A Grade II* listed building at the centre of town, restored in 2014, now houses the council and the local museum. That is a choice about what a town centre is for.
Castle Cary's Tuesday market, and the shops built around it
Every Tuesday morning, without exception, the street market sets the town's rhythm. The independent shops around it have had a long time to learn how to use that.
How to choose which local networks are worth your time
Time is the only budget most small businesses genuinely cannot expand. Here is how to tell which rooms pay for themselves and which quietly do not.
How Epsom's businesses came together to fund their own high street
At the end of 2017, businesses across Epsom voted to tax themselves to pay for the town centre's own upkeep and promotion. That is what a Business Improvement District actually is.
Derby Day: what one race meeting is worth to the rest of Epsom's businesses
The Derby has been run at Epsom Downs since 1780. For one day, one of the biggest events in world horse racing happens on the edge of an ordinary Surrey town.
Epsom's two weekly markets, the Sunday farmers' market, and who they're really for
Epsom's Market Place runs a general market twice a week and a farmers' market once a month, alongside a shopping centre and a food hall. Three different kinds of footfall, doing three different jobs.
How independent businesses compete with national chains online
You will not outspend a chain and you do not need to. The gap they cannot close is specificity, and it is mostly free.
Surbiton Business Community: a networking group that actually gets people in a room
A free meetup on the first Friday of every month, run by and for local independents, with a format built to get past the small talk. It is a good working example of what a local network can do right.
Surbiton's farmers' market, sixteen years in
Since October 2009, the third Saturday of the month on Maple Road has meant up to forty stalls and a market that has raised over fifty thousand pounds for local causes along the way.
Trading a mile from Kingston: what that means for an independent in Surbiton
Kingston's town centre, with its department stores and shopping malls, is about a mile away. That proximity is a genuine competitive fact for a Surbiton business, and also not the whole story.
The town that gave a national company its name
In 1925 a milk haulage firm took the name of the small Somerset town it started in. A century, several acquisitions and a stock market listing later, that name is still on the lorries.
What a local business community actually does for a small business
Beyond the networking breakfast, a working local business community does four specific things. None of them is swapping business cards.
What a shop with fans on every continent can still teach a small business
Terry Pratchett endorsed a Wincanton shop devoted entirely to his Discworld novels. It built a global following, and the physical shop still closed.
What a town's business scene looks like when it is working, and when it is not
The difference is rarely footfall or rent. It shows up in who talks to whom, how new arrivals are treated, and whether anything gets finished.
Why local search matters more than it did five years ago
Search used to send people to your website. Now it answers them directly, and what it says about you is assembled from places you may never have checked.
Wincanton's high street, and the case for keeping it independent
OnePlanet Wincanton, a local sustainability group, puts the figure at 95 per cent independent. Whatever the exact number, the high street is overwhelmingly chain-free, and that is worth understanding rather than just enjoying.
The South Somerset Circle, an introduction
After a run of posts about Wincanton and Bruton, an argument for the towns working together rather than measuring themselves against each other.
Was Bruton a media hype? Part two, social media
By 2017 a small Somerset town had more Facebook groups than it had pubs, and the tone of them was doing real work, for better and worse.
Responses to Wincanton against Bruton
The Wincanton piece got a bigger reaction than it deserved, and the most useful part of it was the list of businesses people told me I had missed.
Was Bruton a media hype? Part one, the locals
Two years after I reviewed the reviewers, I went back to see whether local opinion had settled, and whether the worry about house prices had turned out to be right.
Why Wincanton is the new Bruton
Written with a large pinch of salt in 2017, when my home town started to show signs of the same uplift its neighbour had been given credit for.
An interview with Truffles Brasserie
A conversation with Richard Sorapure about a career that went from Park Lane to marine geology and back to a kitchen at the bottom of Bruton High Street.
The Bruton Packhorse Fair 2015
The late May bank holiday fair, the dog show, and what the reaction to it said about the town.
Bruton. Media hype, or the real deal?
In 2015 the national press decided Bruton was the most fashionable town in the country. Locals were less sure. I grew up nearby, so I had an opinion.
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