Doing business with soul

Is it possible to do business with a soul? And what the actual what does that mean?

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of working with multiple people that cultivated and embedded that belief in me. Yet it’s still telling when I express this ambition it’s mainly greeted with a reaction on a scale ranging from bewilderment to disdain.

Is this a response to some sort of privileged frippery on my part? That I’m not hard headed enough to look predominantly through the lens of the bottom line, that there is too much naivety guiding the ethos, that it’s all a bit pollyanna and… nice? And does that even sit comfortably with the nature of business? Shouldn’t this be left for not for profit or voluntary or funded services - to add the soft planting to the hard landscaping of business?

I guess in unpicking the above, it comes down to priorities and the aims of a business when it comes to setting up. When viewing this space, there was something deep down inside me that felt the potential for this to become somewhere in Horsforth where you could host events and have people meet up, where you could discover things and establish a dialogue within the local community to ensure connections are made between those that make, do and support these endeavours. An ecosystem for creativity through STUFF.

In order to thrive an ecosystem must have certain factors in place, and in establishing one, there needs to be a heck of a lot of time, patience, nerve, encouragement and dare I say it, luck. My belief is that ecosystems that work understand there is randomness involved but do not see that as something that negates it’s importance or need to carry on. That resilience and hope, to me, is the soul of a place. You can walk into places and know if it is full or devoid of soul. It’s easy enough for you to see if someone is running the place with soul because it’s an invisible yet unmissable feeling, even if it’s not your sort of place. You feel it.

Business with a soul for me is one where as much (probably if not more) effort is placed on communicating that initial gut feeling and helping the person who walks into the premises to experience it. To experience and connect to your idea or concept in action. I believe as consumers we have been through the ringer on false promises and businesses that act without authenticity or without soul and we can smell them a mile off. And what I think is most important about a business with soul, the thing that really makes the difference, is not something that can be bought. It’s something that’s grown and nurtured and treats the people using it as front and centre without invalidating your own ideas and passion.

At the same time, like any ecosystem, the web and connections of a business are not rigid. They ebb and flow and join and diverge in line with outside factors and with other people’s input. But always, in the centre, is that resilience and hope the owner brings. If that’s not there, it’s my belief things do not hold and they do fall apart.

So when I try say I want to do business with soul, I guess I mean with an aim to bring some part of me and my passion and include other people in that and participate in an ongoing exchange. Because irrespective of the bottom line, life is most definitely richer for those who do business with soul.

Buying is a conscious act.

I don’t know when I first started thinking about stocked. but as soon as it became apparent as an idea I was going to try, I knew I wanted it to be “one of those sort of shops”.

“Those sort of shops” are the type of shop I love. I love the feeling you get when you walk through the door and it feels deeply personal. You sense the time someone has taken to select things for you to look at, to browse, to buy. They’ve decided the placement and presentation. They’ve looked at which brands and the feel of them in relation to everything else because in “those sorts of shops”, there is weight given to both the sum and the parts. I love “those sorts of shops” because you come away feeling like you will treasure whatever you bought as it’s often unexpected and discovered, like treasure itself.

I also love “those sort of shops” because to me, they resemble the way we assemble our homes and in perhaps a hopeful extension, ourselves. Once the big structures are in, you look at expressing yourself through the things you acquire and then arrange. Some of those decisions are made out of necessity, others more deliberately considered. Some things last a while, others end up being edited out. And whilst there are many actions and deeds and words that define us, the need to use objects as markers of ourselves is also a way for us to work out who we are, what our tastes are, why certain things resonate with us enough for us to take them for ourselves or offer them to other people and why some things just pass us by.

I think it can be easy to trivialise objects and think “it’s just a card/cushion/vase/whatever” but in setting up stocked. and reflecting on why I’ve always been drawn to “those of sort shops” I’m realising more than ever that buying things is a conscious act. At times it can happen without us ever really thinking about that power, such is it’s ubiquity in the structures of life in capitalism. We can easily buy things without consideration, or we buy things out of necessity and therefore no thought needs to be given. And yet underpinning that is the choice to decide what we buy. And that choice is ours.

I knew with stocked. I wanted the shop area to be a space to champion creativity and celebrate the art of making and doing. When selecting makers to be part of our initial offering, I was struck by the stories behind the objects made. What motivates someone to make something. Why they do what they do, and how it is done. Once I started to understand those things, it became clear how much of that came through in the pieces they made. It was like shining a light on an object and finally seeing the molecules of thought, of imagination, of process that it was comprised of, and somehow, that made me more deeply attached, in a hugely satisfying way.

It feels indulgent to talk this way when there is a serious reality rubbing up against this optimistic idealism of objects. Which is basically: in order for these things to exist, there has to be someone buying it. So again, I return to the thought that buying is a conscious act. When you buy something from someone locally based, or an independent brand, you are directly affecting other people. You enter an ecosystem where your contribution and appreciation is a contribution to someone else’s contribution, which in turn often means someone else can as well. If stocked. does well, it will mean a platform for others to sell their work without the prohibitive overheads. To get recognition and insight into what to do next. To keep moving onwards. To continue to create.

Use it or lose it, particularly in a world of convenience and online shopping and companies that always take precedence over the people working for them, all of that matters so much especially as an independent company and even more so as an independent company in bricks and mortar retail which can provide so much for it’s surrounding community. In order to maintain the things we believe in, that we feel a connection to, I really think it’s important we use our decision making to question and interrogate what we’re buying. For us as consumers to consider why we’re buying and what or indeed who we are choosing to support in buying. Which is why buying is a conscious act. And one that I know “those sort of shops”, like stocked. will always take seriously.