Laura Wall walked away from a TV career to become a full-time artist – now her gallery has been named art retailer of the year.
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A Devon artist and gallery owner celebrating being named art retailer of the year has described how having a real-life shop has been key to her success.
Laura Wall, who may be best known as the creator of the Goose books, impressed judges to bag the accolade from the the Fine Arts Trade Guild with her business approach to the pandemic – keeping the lights on at her Teignmouth gallery even when the world had closed down.
While she had to quickly grow the e-commerce side of her business when repeated lock-downs effectively closed down the UK, it was in fact her presence in the heart of the town that kept her in people's minds.
Laura explained: "Even when everything was closed during lockdown people could look in the windows and see me working away or packing boxes for delivery. They said how nice it was to see the lights on and someone working, it kind of gave people hope.
"When the shop was closed, it was so vital to us not to take anything for granted. During the second lockdown I had a lady helping me full time as we were selling online and doing local deliveries for free. We were saying to our customers 'we know you can't get to us but we can come to you.
"We continued with our mailouts and Facebook to stay in touch with our customers, we took a risk and used some of our £10,000 Government support grant to create our new kitchen product range so when everything opened again, we wanted to give people a reason to come back to us.
"We were constantly trying to adapt so we could still reach our customers."
Laura explained how her limited-edition print 'Times we won't forget' referencing the the cruise ship 'car park' became an instant hit.
Her image captures a time during the pandemic when some of the world's most glamourous liners – including the QE2 – were moored up off Teignmouth for weeks on end.
Laura said: "It went absolutely bananas – our framers at Haddon Galleries had to bring staff off furlough to frame the prints, the popularity of that one was incredible."
Laura said that's why her bricks and mortar gallery is the lynchpin of her business.
The pandemic meant that she had to expand her ecommerce website – now finding around 30% of online sales from across the UK and overseas.
But it is the human contact that influences the business.
"I work on my art in the gallery so I hear what people are saying. Sometimes you have to have a thick skin because I don't think people think that it's actually me in the shop but its a fantastic sounding board for what people like and what they don't.
"Plus people come in asking for things or say 'why don't you do this or that' and if you hear that enough times then you soon work out what people want."
Back in 2010, Laura gave up a career in TV production to see if she could make a living out of her art full time. Together with her husband and business partner Dave Butt, she made a conscious decision to go beyond selling just art work and high- quality prints with a move to her bigger gallery in 2019.
Laura's gallery has become synonymous with Teignmouth. Her art work adorns the 'Welcome to Teignmouth' sign and she has just finished the new pub sign at The Ship, one of her favourite haunts on the town's Back Beach.
The arts quarter of the town has sprang up around her gallery on Northumberland Place, which is the shop window for her product range that has expanded to include everything from jewellery to Gin.
A big priority for Laura is maintaining high quality for her products and that means hours of research by husband Dave to find the right manufacturing partners.
Laura explained: "It takes a lot of time to find the right manufacturer and 90% of our products are made by small companies in the South West and the UK.
Launching product lines is costly and it's got to be right, said Laura.
"It is expensive so we have to be as sure as we can be before we go ahead. That is where social media is so useful because you can go directly to your followers and ask what they like best.
"I did some wallpaper recently and asked about colours. It's that feedback that is so helpful.
"But I don't think for a minute we could have that relationship with people if it weren't for our actual physical shop. People can see us in the town and our love for the place and that is why people like to support us."
Laura recently hired a designer to help use her artwork in new ways.
And the hope is to open another gallery in the near future.
Laura said: “We want to thank our customers for their loyalty and support, especially over the last couple of years. Not all independent galleries made it through to the other side, but because of the phenomenal support of our customers we have come out stronger.
"We had to do things a certain way out of necessity through the pandemic and because we had to adapt we have grown the business and found out what works in a way that we couldn't have before.
"We've learned to not take anything for granted."
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