The three independent St Helens businesses you voted top of the shops

Independent traders are at the heart of St Helens’ local communities and with the ongoing cost of living crisis they’re struggling.

It’s not easy running your own business, juggling increasing overheads, big company competition and a move away from town and city centre high streets and local communities to online shopping.

As part of our Best of 2024 competition, earlier this month we wanted to show St Helens’ small business owners some love and celebrate the best the town has to offer.

Readers and followers of the St Helens Star nominated their favourite independent shop or business as part of the #ukindieday celebrations.

Independents account for around 65 per cent of the 290,000 retail outlets in the UK and they are at the heart of local communities.

There were nominations for butchers and florists, fashion boutiques and home improvement places covering dozens of businesses in St Helens.

We shortlisted the top 10 businesses and shops in the town and you voted Gavin’s Butchers your number one.

View St Helens’ top 10 independent shops and businesses here

As Independent Retailer Month comes to an end, we wanted to shine a spotlight on the three businesses that you voted top of the shops in St Helens – Gavins Butchers, St Helens Book Stop and Fox & Bobbin.

GAVIN’S BUTCHERS

Gavin's Butchers opened in 1987

What’s your name?

David Gavin

What’s the name of the business?

Gavin’s Butchers Ltd

What’s the address?

21 Baldwin Street, St Helens, WA10 2RS

Are you the owner/manager?

I’m the owner

Gavin's Butchers has 37 years of serving fresh quality meat

When did you open the business?

In August, 1987 with my dad Chris.

Tell me a bit about your business. What do you do? What services do you provide?

We have 37 years of serving fresh quality meat, serving local businesses, from pubs, restaurants and cafés to care homes. We’re open Tuesday to Saturday and offer free home deliveries on Wednesdays and Fridays. All our ingredients are fresh and we have a five star food and hygiene rating. We offer gluten free products as well as healthy choice, less than five per cent fat mince and low fat sausages in various flavours - pork and leak, pork and black pudding, garlic and peri peri.

Why did you decide to open your own business?

My dad and I thought we had the experience and knowledge to open our own. It turned out to be a great success.

What makes your business different to others in the same area/field? What sets your business apart from your competitors?

Quality and service.

Sausage flavours include pork and leak, pork and black pudding, garlic and peri peri.

Tell us why customers like coming to you. Why do they choose your business over others?

All our customers get the personal touch as well as great quality meats and expectational service. We offer freshly made sausages and burgers made daily on site.

THE BOOK STOP

Book clubs are popular at The Book Stop

What’s your name?

Nik Lowe

What’s the name of the business?

The Book Stop

What’s the address?

11 Bridge Street, St Helens, WA10 1NN

Are you the owner/manager?

I’m the manager

When did you open the business?

In November 2021

Book signings at The Book Stop

Tell me a bit about your business. What do you do? What services do you provide?

We are an independent bookshop and coffee shop in the heart of St Helens. We stock thousands of new books, as well as a range of small gifts and cards. We aim to be a community hub for the town and we run a variety of different events from the shop including shared reading, children’s story-time, book clubs and family-friendly events. We also operate a coffee shop at the back which serves fantastic coffee, delicious cakes and light snacks.

Why did you decide to open your own business?

When Wardleworths closed in 2019, St Helens was left without a proper bookshop in the town. Unfortunately, St Helens has one of the poorest literacy rates and deprivation rates in the country and developing reading for pleasure is one of the best ways to offer social mobility to people from challenging socio-economic backgrounds. Our mission is to create a community hub, an inclusive and welcoming environment that encourages reading for pleasure, as well as serving the town for all their literary needs.

What makes your business different to others in the same area/field? What sets your business apart from your competitors?

We operate as a charitable community benefit society, which means we are owned by the people of St Helens who are registered shareholders. The people of St Helens invested more than £40,000 to start the project and this was matched with the Co-op Share Booster Scheme and charitable funding from Steve Morgan Foundation. Any dividends due will be paid out in the form of book tokens, which will ensure long term reinvestment in the shop and the trustee/director model will also guarantee the bookshop remains a bookshop serving the community. We stock more than 5,000 individual titles in the shop and can order the vast majority of any backlist for the next day. We often go the extra mile for our customers, especially if they lack access to the internet.

Why do loyal customers return to your business?

We understand there is a lot of competition for book buying. Online stores and supermarket retail can often offer many bestsellers at high discount. We wish to foster the creativity and inspiration of authors and artists and reward the creator by selling the books at the retail price, with customers knowing that every penny spent at The Book Stop goes into reinvestment for the community. We are customer-focused and believe in a traditional retail experience, offering vast experience in book curation, ordering and even just a friendly voice to chat with, something sadly missing from a lot of today's shopping experiences.

What’s next? What do the next few months hold for you and your business?

We plan to invest heavily in our upstairs space, with an ultimate plan to turn it into a community and events space. This will allow us to be able to host book clubs, writing classes, and other literacy and art-themed events. We have managed to raise some funds to install a platform lift but will likely need some further investment to complete the works.

FOX & BOBBIN

Fox & Bobbin started just before lockdown in 2020

What’s your name?

Katie Heaton

What’s the name of the business?

Fox & Bobbin

What’s the address?

I work from home in St Helens and I sell online at www.foxandbobbin.co.uk for made to order and pre-loved

Are you the owner/manager?

I’m the owner and creator

Fox & Bobbin started as a side hustle for Katie Heaton after she had her little boy

When did you open the business?

February 2020 just before lockdown hit. I had just come back to my dressmaking business from maternity leave after having my little boy, and decided to add Fox & Bobbin as a side hustle, making reusable wipes. It was never meant to be a clothing line or even a full-time job, just a little Etsy shop to sell ready make items!

Tell me a bit about your business. What do you do? What services do you provide? Why did you decide to open your own business?

I started off making reusable wipes. We had swapped our eldest over to purchased cloth nappies and wipes fairly early on and at the time there weren’t many places selling handmade reusable wipes. I made the first batch for myself and a friend and then another friend asked and another and I decided to start a little Etsy shop. I expanded the line into lots of different reusable products that I call Easy Eco Swaps, which includes reusable kitchen roll, breast pads and of course, wipes.

The clothing came later on. My little boy was a chunky baby and he was also wearing cloth nappies, which tend to be a little bulkier around the bum, so I found it really difficult to get trousers to fit him on the high street. Again, I started off by making a few pairs of bottoms for him, never intending to sell them, and then more and more people asked me where I got them from. Having worked and studied in the fashion industry for a long while, I knew a bit about how it worked, and I also knew all about some of the major issues involved in fast fashion, like underpaid garment workers, excess fabric waste and severe quality issues. I decided to start up a line of Cloth Friendly Clothing - clothing that is a) cloth nappy friendly, and b) cut using the minimum amount of waste cloth as possible, sometimes even zero waste. This was a secondary branch of Fox & Bobbin. I even introduced a new conceptual product: the 1 Metre Challenge. Customers choose one metre of their favourite print, and challenge me to make as many items in their chosen size or sizes as possible. Any scraps which aren’t big enough to make clothing are used up by making reusable wipes, hair scrunchies and anything too small to make into those items is then shredded up to be used as stuffing in my scrubbies - scrap stuffed sponges - meaning zero waste from that metre of fabric!

The clothing line started three years ago and the 1 Metre Challenge is my most popular item. People keep coming back for more, so much so that I’ve introduced some big sisters to it: the 1.5 and 2 Metre Challenges!

When I had my youngest in 2022, we were fully committed to doing everything as eco-friendly as possible, and I really got into shopping pre-loved, alongside making for her. By then my Fox & Bobbin clothing line had been going long enough that other customers’ children were outgrowing their items and selling or passing them on as well, so I decided to start up a pre-loved service of my own to make everything much easier!

What makes your business different to others in the same area/field? What sets your business apart from your competitors?

Firstly, quality. I have a thing about quality. Everything from the fabrics being custom printed to cutting, sewing, pressing and packing it all by hand. I’ve been sewing for more than 20 years now, and professionally for around 14 years. Everything I make for Fox & Bobbin is designed and manufactured to last, not just several wears, but several children. It’s designed to be outgrown, passed on and re-worn again and again! I even have a pre-loved; re-loved service on my website where customers whose items have been outgrown can send them back to me in exchange for money off their next order, and I resell the pre-loved items on!

Secondly, customer care. I really like to get to know my customers’ likes, dislikes, and personal styles. I’m not one to peddle “one size fits all” in any aspect: customisation is something that runs at the heart of my business, from “can you tweak this style?” to “can I add this feature?” and beyond. Because everything is handmade to order, the answer is always yes!

Fox & Bobbin caters for children of all ages

Why do loyal customers return to your business?

Because kids keep growing! I joke, but seriously, the quality and the service are the reasons most often given by returning customers. We all know that shopping small gives us that personal touch, and I’ve built my whole business ethos around providing exceptional, personalised service, making eco-friendly items in the most sustainable ways possible. This is an ethos that I carry through my whole business, from using a projector to cut items (replacing traditional paper patterns), to using up every scrap, to using reusable/recyclable packaging.

What’s next? What do the next few months hold for you and your business?

I have been planning the second half of the year in earnest this week. Not to give too much away, but there will be a new autumn/winter collection launch with new prints and items, and a Christmas launch with new prints and items as well as my now traditional advent event, which is 12 days of deals from December 1 to 12.