80 Shop yourself some happiness Happydashery is owned and run by friends Sarah Arkle and Carrie Wainer. Here they talk to Craft Focus about expanding into the store next door to offer a workshop space! Tell us a bit about Happydashery, when did it open and by who? We opened our store in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, in 2019 with an aim to be a bright and colourful beacon on our local high street. Our shelves are full to the brim with ‘little bits of happy’ - gifts, accessories, homewares, craft kits, haberdashery and lots of other joyful surprises to discover, carefully sourced from independent makers and small brands in the UK and further afield. Tell us a bit about your location! We can be found on Leighton Buzzard High Street in Bedfordshire. We’re a small, although rapidly growing, market town. You also run your business online as an e-commerce set-up. Tell us a bit about this. We started off as an online store, before we were given the opportunity to have a pop up within Creighton’s Chocolaterie. When Creighton’s decided to come off the high street, we decided to go fully in and took over the lease for the shop. We’ve continued to run our business online as well as in the bricks and mortar store and have just taken on permanent workshop space in the shop next to us. We try to look after our online shoppers just as well as our local customers. Our full range is available to browse and order for nationwide delivery too. We’ve curated our online store to be a warm and happy place and are now frantically trying to add in all the haberdashery items, as well as the craft supplies, to sit alongside our established range of craft kits. How has business been since Covid? We only just celebrated our first Business Birthday in the February before Covid and the lockdowns kicked in so we do’t have much to compare it to. Ever since we started, it has felt like every day is a school day as we’re constantly learning and evolving and trying to respond to what’s going on. We consider ourselves to be really lucky that we were so early on in our business journey when Covid hit as we never really had a ‘normal’. Have you seen a boom in the craft industry recently/ a new type of customer? Since we’ve started our craft workshops again, we’ve seen a big increase in the number of people taking part and trying out new crafts. Our customer base is growing as our town grows, but is also growing as people have started to see the benefits to doing craft. It isn’t just the process of making something handmade and beautiful, it’s the buzz and mental health aspect to it. Being creative is good for the soul. Not only that but we’ve had a huge increase in the people who are taking up crochet with our amazing tutor @toocutecrafting. Crochet is really having a moment again... as soon as we put a Granny Squares Workshop on it sells out. Tell us a bit about what you stock? We’ve always stocked craft kits as the perfect gift for any occasion but as our range of craft workshops has developed and grown, we’ve extended our range to now encompass basic haberdashery and craft supplies. As craft and haberdashery is absolutely limitless though, we have
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