What Shopping Local Really Does - The SoleLution Portishead Story
It is Small Business Week this week, and I have been thinking about what that actually means. Not the hashtag. The reality of it.
I started SoleLution because I genuinely believe that the right shoe changes things. Not in a marketing way. In a real, everyday way. Feet that hurt affect everything. And most people have never had a proper fitting. They have just made do.
That is still why I turn up every day at our shop on the High Street in Portishead.
But there is something that happens when you choose to shop local in Portishead that goes further than you might realise.
Throughout the year we collect worn but wearable shoes and socks from our customers here in Portishead. Once a year I take them out to Kenya myself, along with my wonderful team of volunteers, to a school called Jolaurabi, run by the charity Educate the Kids. And together we fit them on the children there.
It fills my heart to see the smiles those children give us when we fit them with their shoes. One of the teachers told me that after school that day she could hear all the kids in the village chatting about how they had got new shoes. They were so excited. Just the sound of that, children talking about their shoes on the way home, is something I will never forget.
It is such a privilege to be able to make them happy.
And none of it happens without the people who walk through our door on the High Street in Portishead. The shoes you drop in. The socks you bring along. The fact that you choose to buy from an independent shoe shop rather than somewhere else. It has a ripple effect that goes a long way further than Portishead.
So if you have ever wondered whether shopping local actually makes a difference, that is my answer.
We have also just found out that SoleLution has been nominated in the very first Together Portishead Business and Community Awards, in the High Street Heart category. I did not know what to say when I heard. It means more than I can properly express.
Thank you for being part of what we do. And if you have shoes at home that still have some life left in them, please drop them in at 62 High Street, Portishead any time.
Tanya x