Independent traders in Portsmouth share concerns for 2023 as cost of living continues to hit home

The News is encouraging Portsmouth shoppers to take a ‘use it or lose it’ approach after speaking to traders about how they have overcome what has been a challenging few years. The past few months has seen the closure of beloved local fixtures like Sweet Unique in Gosport while Tangier Road Butchers only escaped a similar fate thanks to support from SAS star Ant Middleton.

Pigeon Books owner Phil Davies, 37, said: ‘We’ve not really known any different because we opened up just in time for the first lockdown and had to close again. It's all we’ve really ever known.

‘I’ve got a really good bunch of regulars, some who have become good friends, and we’re starting to build up good little relationships with local authors and publishers.

‘January is always going to be quiet after a busy Christmas period so I would say at the moment its fairly average, but I don’t think the weather has helped anything.’

Phil has run the bookshop for almost four years and runs a monthly book club at local cafe Hunter Gatherer Coffee, which has proved popular with customers.

He added: ‘Everything is going up in price and unfortunately, the amount of spare money people have got to then buy things to compensate isn’t quite matching it.’

‘A book shop is part of a high street. I feel like every high street should have one really.’

Ruth Fernando, 73, has owned Tattoo Studio Portsmouth Ink since it opened in 2007.

Ruth said: ‘Once Covid restrictions were lifted, all the clients came back so we were fine. We have got a lot of very loyal customers that have been coming to us now for 15 years. We have noticed the increase in energy prices, but it’s not as if the business is going to go under because of it.

‘We’ve had to start opening on Sundays, we work longer hours to accommodate more people coming in, we’ve had to diversify. We’ve started to do laser scar removal. We provide a service like anyone else on the high street.’

‘You have to gear your business up to whatever life throws at you basically. If you want to move forward, just move forward whether there’s a recession or not. If you don’t everything is going to collapse.’

Joshua Bland runs sustainable clothing shop Tweedy Clothing and settled in Albert Road two and a half years ago after previously selling at festivals around the UK.

Joshua said: ‘There’s loads of cool shops around here so it's an awesome place to be in that respect.

‘We make our clothing out of 100 per cent cotton and our winter clothing is made from 100 per cent recycled bottles. We’ve tried to make a sustainable framework so we can stick around forever and also look after the environment.

‘Looking at figures and stuff, it doesn’t look optimistic but I’m an optimist and believe that things could turn around.’

April and Luke Lovelace are a husband and wife team running separate businesses in a single premises separated by a curtain. Seamstress April started Lovelace Atelier in 2020 – a week before the first Covid lockdown was announced. She faced a near complete drop-off in her wedding based clientele but has since ‘diversified’ by bringing husband Luke onboard to run Sweet Tooth cafe, which has increased footfall for both of them.

April said: ‘My energy bills have gone up 500 per cent. It's a battle. I’m one of those services that you only notice if you need it.’

Luke added: ‘Having us both here helps the balance of things rising. We haven’t struggled as much as I imagine some businesses have due to both sharing a building.’

Jennifer Catlow owns antique shop Tango Tea Antiques and is chairwoman of the Albert Road Traders’ Association business support network. Members share issues, like flooding exacerbated by recent bad weather and a recent trend of young men on bicycles intimidating female traders, in a Whatsapp group.

Jennifer said: ‘The police are obviously very busy with other areas in Portsmouth, particularly Palmerston Road apparently. You have to let them know, it’s not their fault. So, we’ve set up this Whatsapp group to be able to do that.’

‘The drains are blocked, that’s not been done, and people’s pavements are sinking. It's like a river some days down here.’

Jennifer said she would like to see Albert Road continue to be a diverse high street and warns there may be too many cafes and bars. She has run Tango Tea with her husband for the past 48 years and added: ‘The strange thing is, talking to the other traders, you can have two shops next to each other and one will have a really bad day and the other will have a fantastic day. Then, the next day it will be the other way around.

Shaping Portsmouth CEO Stef Nienaltowski said that retail accounts for the majority of businesses in Portsmouth, closely followed by construction and technology and the total number of businesses in the city rose from 7,400 to 8,300 between 2017 and 2021.

Stef said: ‘Every business leader I talked to in the last three months, their biggest single issue has been recruitment. That tells you its own story. The issue we’ve got is to fix the skills gap which is not something you do every night. ‘

‘68 per cent of our stock is the micro business. They are our lifeblood. We are such a micro SME entrepreneurial island and long may that continue.’