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Single-Purpose Shops

I think there used to be some kind of a brush shop in Victoria Street in Edinburgh. And a cheese shop.
 
There's a shop in Falmouth that sells mostly beads.
 
There is also a shop in Amsterdam that sells only christmas stuff all year round. Close to the flower market.
 
Not a shop, but there was a stall at my local market which only sold soft plastic foam - the type for thick cushions , cheap beds etc, uphostiery, various colours, thicknesses,

cut to size of course for your requirements

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What is it with Edinburgh? There was a Christmas shop on the Royal Mile (away down towards Holyrood).

There's a bead shop on Brewer Street in Soho.

These single-product shops must be a remnant of earlier times. When you used to buy shoes from the cobbler, linen from the drapers, bread from the baker, fish from the fishmonger and meat from the butcher. Now you go to Tesco's once a fortnight and get everything in one go.

Ooh, yes, the ribbon shop
 
Xanatico said:
There is also a shop in Amsterdam that sells only christmas stuff all year round. Close to the flower market.
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There's a christmas shop in Banbury, but mysteriously I've only sighted it in winter. And it seems to move around.
 
There is another Christmas shop in Victoria street. The brush shop sadly closed down but I think lace shop is still there. Stockbridge also has a cheese shop, there are several bagpipe shops that I have seen and there is a duvet shop in Bruntsfield. I think there are speciality shops for just about everything actually. Kites, hats, antique maps you name it.

i think dual purpose shops are cool too. My favourite so far was the POst Office and Bicycle shop, can't remember where I saw it though!
 
Speaking of dual purpose stores, my parents bought a cabin in Northern Sweden last year. One of the nearest stores they have is a shop selling DIY tools and porn movies. Though I suppose porn movies could be classed as DIY tools.
 
Weird dual purpose shops must be much rarer. I can't think of any except the hairdresser/wedding dress shop in Croydon, which isn't all that weird.
 
Certainly in Ireland there is a preponderance of bars-cum-post offices/ sports shops/ greengrocers etc etc.

Over here the only diverse shops I can think of are shoe repairs, key cutting and trophy engraving, which aren't obviously connected as trades go.
 
There is (or was until recently - I can't be certain if it's still there) a hardware / pet shop just up the road from here called "Pots and Pets". You wonder if they came up with the name before the shop. A bit like calling a combined fish / sewing supplies shop "Chip and Pin". Or a shop selling only works by one of England's finest football managers and Walsall's most famous author "Robson and Jerome". One for the kids there.

I could go on, but I know you'd all rather I didn't. "Pots and Pets" is real, though.
 
There's a shop in Stratford(-on-Avon) on the High Street that sells only candles...

...very popular tho, especially with the ladies :lol: (not stereotyping or anything) and oddly enough, there always seems to be teenagers in there as well :shock: :?
 
Edinburgh's Royal Mile used to boast a shop selling only playing cards.

Gordon
 
Until about three or four years ago, Stockport still had a shop which specialized in 78 rpm records. They did stock LPs as a reluctant concession to modernity. I could be wrong but I don't recall any CDs on the premises.

Ironically, one of the partners now can be found behind the counter of a local charity shop which doesn't seem to bother with black discs at all. :(

Brighton used to boast of a shop which dealt in pianola rolls. People do still make them but I think of most specialisms as migrating to cyberspace. I've just done a quick Google and it looks like it is still there at 134 Islingword Road. I've never been but somehow I feel as if I ought to!

Southport has a second-hand bookshop with a side-line in tropical shells. The premises had been an eccentric museum-emporeum run by an old sea-farer. I don't know how much of the original stock went with the building but I gather the present owner, Mr Parkinson, found there was sufficient continued interest in the traditional wares to continue with them alongside his books. 8)
 
There's one near me that only sells (and repairs) reconditioned vacuum cleaners.


I am liking this thread but unless somone knows of a shop selling only Dragon's teeth I wonder if it should really be in chat?

Or maybe not? :)
 
Our small village (post-industrial, in a valley in southwest Wales) had a shop that sold nothing but belly-dancing costumes and accessories. It opened three or four years ago, but closed last year.
However, to make up for this loss, we now have a kilt shop.
 
Oh yes, there must be quite a few of these single-purpose shops which mushroom up when somebody wants to turn their current hobby into a business. I think I spotted a Line-Dancing shop in Heywood - all those ersatz cowboy accessories looked strangely at home on the main street there*.

*added 25th April: I went to peep at it today. It is still there but now bills itself as a Cowboy Wear Shop, with a large Confederate flag blowing in the breeze! Heywood Cowboys are not to be confused with the Cheetham Hill variety - it's a local term for the orthodox Jews in big hats!

I wonder if these businesses represent somebody's life-savings or redundancy-package going up in one magnificent burst of High Street Presence or if the owners are serial offenders. Maybe today's Line-Dancers were yesterday's Citizens' Banders and Step Aerobics proprietors. :?
 
JamesWhitehead - yes, I've been musing along the same lines.

But could they be a front for something more sinister? I shall have to check out those sporrans. :D
 
There are some where you wonder how on earth they keep going, year after year. There's a ladies clothes shop by my tube station, which is a minor stop, the parade has your usual butcher, baker, drycleaner and cornershop, and this odd ladies clothes shop. I've never ever seen anyone in there. How is it possible? I've lived there for about 7 years now, and i swear i've never seen a customer.

And then there's the scummy high street in coulsdon which frankly is quite minging, and lo, there's a bang and olufson shop. How random is that??? Who pops down the high street for some pick'n mix out of woolworths, a kettle from poundstretcher, get me shoes re-heeled and i might pop in to b&o to see if i can pick up a new stereo system.
 
lemonpie3 said:
And then there's the scummy high street in coulsdon which frankly is quite minging, and lo, there's a bang and olufson shop. How random is that???
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I would imagine that an upmarket company like b&o does an awful lot of business by mail order/internet or by word-of-mouth, and not just by passing trade, so it would make a certain amount of sense to have a shop in a seemingly odd location, especially if the rent in Coulsdon is cheap. And if someone particularly wants to visit the shop, Surrey is not exactly the Outer Hebrides.
 
There's one near me that only sells (and repairs) reconditioned vacuum cleaners.
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I've got one of those not far away.

Also The Spy Shop (covert surveillence equipment) the scuba diving shop, the reptile shop, and seasonally, the firework shop.
 
There's a place called "Barbeque World" in Godmanchester. Guess what it sells...
 
Perhaps the best dual-item combo appears in Bill Bryson's Down Under, where he describes a visit to a sex/pet shop. Apparently the two sides of the store are strictly segregated...

More troubling to me is a shop nearby which sells only crap. It's a second hand shop, so that's perhaps to be expected, but you really would have to go out of your way to assemble such a quantity of old, broken things that no one would concievably want to buy (their books section isn't even interesting from a comedy point of view). The particularly uninteresting things in their window haven't been changed for at least three years, either...

I smell a front.
 
small town here

Hmm. I live in a small town (Santa Cruz, California), and we've got all sorts of single-purpose shops. Probably a combination of the town size and a very, very strong local effort to keep the big-box stores out.

However, we'll have a HomeDepot in Capitola (town just south) someday, although the HomeDepot has been in the works for over a year and still shows no signs of life.

No Wal-mart (is that the equivalent of Tesco?)--knowing the character of Santa Cruz, I doubt Wal-mart would even try to establish in this area.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
There's one near me that only sells (and repairs) reconditioned vacuum cleaners.
Click to expand...

I've got one of those not far away.

Also The Spy Shop (covert surveillence equipment) the scuba diving shop, the reptile shop, and seasonally, the firework shop.
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I know of a spy shop as well - perhaps we are both thinking of the same one - without revealing too much. Near Baker's Arms?
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lemonpie3 said:
I think there used to be some kind of a brush shop in Victoria Street in Edinburgh. And a cheese shop.
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A memory surfaces ..... is it called "choose a cheese"?
 
Re: small town here

ElishevaBarsabe said:
No Wal-mart (is that the equivalent of Tesco?)--knowing the character of Santa Cruz, I doubt Wal-mart would even try to establish in this area.
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You're probably right in as much as Tescos are the largest supermarket chain in the UK (I believe that 12p in every pound spent in the UK is now at Tesco - scary), but Walmart have recently taken over ASDA, so my local hypermarket now has the Walmart star above it. Makes me feel proud to be British!

Let's be honest, however much we love them, these giants are themselves single-purpose shops - their purpose is to drive all the other retailers in the area out of business. Or am I being a tad cynical?
 
Re: small town here

Peripart said:
Tescos are the largest supermarket chain in the UK...
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Thanks for the clarification!

Walmart have recently taken over ASDA
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That is very scary.

Let's be honest, however much we love them, these giants are themselves single-purpose shops - their purpose is to drive all the other retailers in the area out of business. Or am I being a tad cynical?
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Or, their purpose is to make money, no matter what happens to the community in which they're embedded.

At the last giant corporation I worked for, the CEO stated outright that the purpose of the company was to make money no matter what product the company produced. (I have ethical qualms about that point of view, but I don't work there anymore.)
 
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