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.