Up The Garden Bath: Community project which took over empty Next store tops almost £50,000 in small business sales

Peterborough based community project, Up The Garden Bath, is celebrating a summer of success after their UNITY pop-up shop has generated almost £50,000 in sales for small, local businesses.

Up The Garden Bath assembled 70 small retailers in two temporary pop up shops in Peterborough's Queensgate Shopping Centre in just 10 weeks, cashing in £48,000.

The reason behind the store was simple: to tell shoppers to ditch the big high street brands and purchase products created by local businesses, crafters, makers and artists instead.

Empowering traders

Co founder, Kez Hayes Palmer, explained: "I read that if every adult in the UK spent £5 a week in their local shops and businesses – instead of online, at the supermarket or with huge multinationals – it would be worth £13.5 billion going directly back into our towns and cities.

"This would mean real jobs, better facilities and nicer places to live.

"Shop local and the money goes into the local economy not funding some billionaires' next trip to space. We decided to call the project UNITY as we wanted to try and unite people with a shared collaborative project that brought people together and empowered them."

Initially, Up The Garden Bath moved into the vacant former Paperchase unit on 8 June and transformed the empty unit into a vibrant space for 40 small local vendors within a 50 mile radius of Peterborough.

Kez continued: "For us it's about more than just selling products, it's about making friends, bonding and meeting creative individuals and hearing their story and feeling their passion.”

Up The Garden Bath set an ambitious target of generating £20,000 in sales for local businesses during their six week stay at Paperchase – and ended up topping £22,500.

‘Bigger, bolder and better’

Co-founder Dave Poulton added "Queensgate were so impressed with the success of the project and the positive buzz it was creating that they asked us to extend and expand the project for a further six weeks into a larger, more prestigious and prominent location.

“Queensgate kindly offered us the use of the former Next unit situated in their main shopping square. This larger space allowed us to go bigger, bolder and better and enabled us to increase the number of vendors in store to over 60.”

The pair then set an increased larger target of £25,000 to add to the initial £22,500 generated in Paperchase.

As of the 20 August Up The Garden Bath have a raised a cumulative total of over £48,000.

Their store in the old Next unit is open until 31 August.

Dave added: "Nearly 4,000 sales transactions proves that there's a big demand for a store like UNITY and we are hopeful that we will pop up again in Queensgate closer to Christmas.

“Shopping habits are changing and the cost of living crisis is making people think twice about spending but we believe that our UNITY project can breathe life back into the high street and local economy."

This latest success for Up The Garden Bath comes after after the project was chosen to transform seven acres of land as part of the proposed redevelopment plan for the East of England Showground.