Craft Focus - Page number 86 - June/July 2021 (Issue 85)

86 Celebrating 30 years! Natasha Necati, executive director of Crafty Arts discusses the past 30 years of this successful online and physical arts & crafts retailer Tell us a bit about Crafty Arts, when did you open your brick and mortar store and why? The first shop opened in May 1991, by my mother- and father-in-law. Before opening the shop, Lorraine was a sign writer by trade, creating beautiful lettering for department stores such as Fortnum & Mason. However, she struggled to find art materials for her craft and so decided to open an art supplies shop. If she herself was struggling for materials, how many more were? Lorraine saw a need and filled the demand. When did you feel the need to open your e-commerce site for Crafty Arts? The first website was made in 2000. It was more of an informational page which showed the locations of our shops and a brief look at our products sold. In 2007 came the big push to add e-commerce to the business. Jay, son of Nik and Lorraine, left his job as a web designer to run the e-commerce side of the business full time. It took some time and perseverance, but we stuck at it and started to see growth. Now we see ourselves as your local online hobby shop. Local to our customers who can travel to the physical shop, but also local to all at just the click of the button, no matter where they are as we deliver worldwide. Are there plans to open any more physical stores? Over the years we’ve had multiple sites, splitting store and warehouse and through this experience we’ve found that we love the fact that we have everything all in one place. A theme that echoes throughout our product offering both online and in store. No matter your hobby or niche, we have something for everyone. By combining our online stock holding with our brick and mortar shop, this gives us the opportunity to be available to all without having multiple sites. How different is it running the two? Over the years, we’ve found that both are very different sides to a coin. We’ve found that a lot more is involved running an online business, more so than you would realise, especially as we sell on multi channels worldwide. We have to look at reports and statistics for each of them and base decisions based on the data that we have, ensuring that all work in perfect harmony with each other and stock distribution is optimised. How has business been over the past year? Business has been extremely hard, but found that we were very fortunate to have both brick and mortar and be online. Having to close the shop and the Creative Hub (our teaching room for all ages) for most of year, meant that we had to put everything into online. We’re thankful that we were able to still run the business and be in the position to move forward, unlike many of our counterparts. Even though we’re still standing, we had to push through the past year and make some hard decisions along the way. One of the things that stood out to us was the determination not just from us as owners, but from our team and their want for the business to succeed. It meant a lot to us. There was a lot of early starts and late nights but the team comradery and effort really allowed Jay and I to focus on weathering the storm and coming out the other side. Have you seen a boom in the craft industry recently or a new type of customer? We noticed an influx of new customers last year especially during the first lockdown. The government guidelines stated that we could only leave our homes for essentials and short outdoor exercise, so an interest of new hobbies arose. From parents now home-schooling children, to those on furlough trying to keep positive and mostly everyone finding something to keep themselves busy. Be it taking up acrylics for the first time or finding a puzzle that caught their eye, we were proud as a business to help support our customers, old and