Family-run Telford store for small companies shuts | EUROtoday

A family-run Stoke-on-Trent enterprise says it has needed to shut one in every of its retail shops in Shropshire due to an absence of gross sales.

Yellow by Keep It Local has retailers in Stoke’s Potteries Centre, and Warrington, Cheshire, and inventory objects from small companies – with the vast majority of the cash going again to them.

The retailer in Shropshire was primarily based within the Telford Shopping Centre, and opened in September. It closed on Friday with its house owners saying it was a choice that “hurt”.

“In Telford, footfall is there… but it doesn’t translate to sales, so you can see busy malls, but they’re not always coming in to the stores,” stated co-owner Laura Nixon.

“Ultimately we have huge operating costs, we’ve seen an increase in minimum wage, we’ve seen increase in national insurance, our business rates are disproportionate to the money that we take – so we’re working on such a small margin.

“The majority of the cash goes again to those stockists… we’re not making 80, 90 per cent mark-ups on these things,” she added.

Nixon said 48 suppliers had lost their revenue stream thanks to the closure, and three people had lost their jobs.

“Ultimately, the cash wasn’t there,” she stated.

“We made the choice to shut Telford so that we might preserve the opposite two retailers thriving.”

More than 80 per cent of the Telford store’s stockists were based locally in the Midlands, and included items from ceramics and art to clothing and fragrance.

However, Nixon said the two other stores in Stoke-on-Trent and Warrington were well-supported.

In the Stoke store’s first three months in 2024, it saw about 330,000 visitors and had given back about £165,000 to small businesses that it worked with in that period.

The store in Warrington opened in February 2025.