It seems that miracles DO sometimes happen – even here in Ruddington! We are delighted to reveal that Ruddington Village Butchers will remain open for business this Monday morning after all.
On Thursday we reported how despairing Shane Ginty said he could see “no way out” of his financial dilemma – after a recent drop in custom meant his Church Street shop had been trading at a loss for the past few months. He was on the verge of bankruptcy and told us: “Barring a miracle it looks like I’m going to have to close on Saturday.”
Having previously reported the shock, despair and outcry from residents when Thomas’s Greengrocers suddenly shut for good before Easter, RUDDINGTON.info is aware that there are thousands of us who really DO value our unique and precious village centre shops and passionately wish to support them. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, we often “forget” to actually USE these traders and think that somehow they’ll survive without us. But they won’t. So that’s when we threw down the gauntlet to “use it or lose it”!
Our headline “WE HAVE TWO DAYS TO SAVE RUDDINGTON VILLAGE BUTCHERS!” seems to have done the trick for Shane – in the short term, at least.
Your response was superb. Thank you: Simply by residents choosing to go to their village butcher for meat, sausages, burgers, bacon, ham, cheese, pies, condiments and free range eggs over a 48 hour period – rather than their usual supermarket – Shane has now announced he’s made enough money to clear his debts and to stay open. Not only that, so many villagers came to queue through his door on Friday that he needed an emergency re-stock from one of his wholesalers in the afternoon to make sure he had some more meat to sell to customers on Saturday! Other local media picked up on the story and ran with it – including BBC Radio Nottingham who did an interview with Shane on its Saturday Breakfast Show. You can listen to it >>HERE<<. Sally from Phoenix Flowers on High Street offered the chance for anyone who spent £10 or more with Shane on Friday or Saturday the chance to get entered into a draw to win a bouquet of flowers. The end result of all this coverage was the “miracle” which Shane required:
“Saturday’s sales were fantastic” he says. “The only fresh food left when I closed were 4 tubs of dripping and 3kg of lamb! Again thanks for your brilliant RUDDINGTON.info piece. The good news is I will continue trading when 4 days ago it looked impossible.”
Villager Lyndsay Jobling went even further to help by launching a crowdfunding page to try to save the shop. She said: “I am a new to the village and already I feel proud to be in Ruddington. As a community we can help them too keep their doors open not only by choosing to shop local but also to give them a little boost to promote their business in anyway they see fit. Let’s help SAVE OUR VILLAGE BUTCHERS! Don’t let another independent trader fall victim to the current climate.” You can view Lyndsay’s fundraising efforts >>HERE<<.
Of course, all that Shane really needs is enough regular customers to keep him in profit: “The more money people put into businesses like mine the better shopping choices they will have. I am always looking at diversity in cuts of meat, cooked produce, cheeses and ambient produce but cannot do this without decent cash-flow. I am one of the more open minded traders in the village and the more people support me the more I can offer them.”
Unfortunately the fairytale endings we see in feel-good family films, with a tear in our eye as despair turns to joy before the final credits roll, are hard to sustain in real life. The change in shopping habits caused by the internet, large discounting supermarkets and busy lifestyles means that Shane and other village centre traders are still very much an endangered species. Unless more of us make a conscious effort to support our precious businesses on a weekly basis – who in turn must find better ways to promote themselves in today’s digital world – they will probably disappear.
Earlier this month we reported on the progress of the Ruddington Village Centre Partnership (RVCP) which was set up to encourage people to rediscover one of the main joys of living and working in our pretty village. It’ll remind us of the impressive variety of local shops which residents can actually walk to and browse – whether as part of a trip out for lunch, meeting friends for coffee (or something stronger), a visit to one of our tourist attractions, or simply a welcome break from work. The forthcoming Ruddington Loyalty Card will allow access to monthly special offers from village traders. Other initiatives include a possible weekly outdoor market and a working group trying to find a way forward resolving the parking issues in and around our village centre.
If you have any ideas for attracting more shoppers to Ruddington, or to address an issue in our village centre which you think needs their attention, you’re encouraged to get in touch with RVCP as soon as possible via cooperate29@gmail.com.
