Britain’s Best Shop Window Popular Vote Winner: Kindle House
We talk with Katie from Kindle House, the winner of our first Instagram competition Britains Best Shop Window, in the popular vote category.
Kindle House is a Lifestyle and Interiors brand in South Wales. The flagship store is nestled amongst a small parade of shops in Ystradgynlais and a smaller boutique store can be found in Mumbles. Some of our brands include Nomination Italy Jewellery, Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, Masai Clothing, Onjenu, Alpe shoes, Melin Tregwynt.
Tell us a little bit about Kindle House?
Kindle House is a Lifestyle and Interiors store in South Wales. The flagship store is nestled amongst a small parade of shops in the little Town of Ystradgynlais.
Owner, Emma Purvis moved back to the area with her young family in 2010, having worked as an HR Manager in Hertfordshire. With no boutique style stores within a 20-mile radius, Emma spotted a gap in the market and Kindle House was born.
The store is set in a large Victorian end terrace, with 6 individually styled rooms full of hand-selected pieces. Following the success of the Ystradgynlais store, Emma opened a smaller boutique store in the picturesque village of Mumbles in 2015.
What inspire you when you design your shop window? do you have any blogs, magazines or shops that you use for inspiration?
We’re always inspired by the sharingaworldofshops hashtag on Instagram. There are so many great images from all around the world!
The inspiration for our current Christmas window came during a trip to one of our suppliers back in January. They had built a full-size house front in their show-room to display their products, we took one look at it and thought, we can do that!
What are the most important things to consider when you are planning a shop window?
We start the year with a planning meeting and create a calendar that includes all of the window changes and the general theme of each display. As we go through the year, we add more detail to the plan as new products arrive and we spot new trends.
We always make sure our windows are relevant to the season and are linked to one of the themes we have in store
What works and what doesn’t?
We’ve found that we don’t need to cram in all of our products to each window display. Our customers favourite windows are always the ones where less is more, ones that give a taste of what they’ll find inside. We like our window to entice people in, rather than give the whole game away!
Do you need a big budget to design a compelling show window?
There’s no need for a big budget, we spend very little on each window. Furniture recycling shops are a great place to pick up bargains. We use lots of old furniture that we then upcycle with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint (which we stock).
Our current Christmas Window is the first one where we’ve enlisted the help of a retired D&T teacher. When we briefed him he laughed and couldn’t see why we wanted to build the front of a house in our window, but now it’s all finished and we’ve decorated it, he thinks it’s great! The amount of publicity our window has received through word of mouth and on social media far outweighs the cost of materials and time.
We’ll also make use of it next year by putting it in the window of our store in Mumbles, we’ll probably update the door colour to refresh it.
How often you change your shop window?
We change our shop window monthly up to November, our Christmas window stays in for November and December as it’s always a big one! If it’s a clothing window, we change the mannequins often to keep it fresh and to ensure the clothes are not sun damaged.
Where can we find out more about Kindle House?
We’ve just launched a new website, www.kindlehouse.co.uk and are active on Facebook and Instagram.
