Shop for small businesses shuts after low sales

A family-run Stoke-on-Trent business says it has had to shut one of its retail stores in Shropshire because of a lack of sales.

Yellow by Keep It Local has shops in Stoke's Potteries Centre, and Warrington, Cheshire, and stock items from small businesses - with the majority of the money going back to them.

The store in Shropshire was based in the Telford Shopping Centre, and opened in September. It closed on Friday with its owners saying it was a decision 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," said 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 money goes back to these stockists… we're not making 80, 90 per cent mark-ups on these items," she added.

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

"Ultimately, the money wasn't there," she said.

"We made the decision to close Telford in order that we could keep the other two shops 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 shop in Warrington opened in February 2025.