Our wee gift shop celebrated our 3rd Birthday yesterday with cake, fizzy and a bit of shopping. Thank you to everyone that came down and helped us celebrate, send lovely messages on our social media, made purchases and made our birthday a special one!
Sign by Claire Barclay Draws
I launched the Emporium back in 2014, as a way of using the Glow Arts office space here at BAaD at the weekends and to encourage folk to come back to the Barras to shop. So we opened with a bunch of folk and jazz albums (which I spent 12 hours driving round Glasgow and Edinburgh picking up), an exhibition by fab young photographer and fiddle player Louise Bichan and a handful of products from Bonnie Bling, Hole in My Pocket and Rhubarb and Ginger. At the time I had no idea what an adventure I was about to go on.
And an adventure it has been with twists and turns and a load of hurdles to overcome, but I am absolutely delighted that Braw Wee Emporium is still here (and in a bigger space) in spite of it all. We are now working with well over a 100 suppliers all based in or from Scotland, including designers, artists, musicians, food producers etc.
We have been working as hard as we can with the resources we have to build up the shop and come sustainable, and offer our lovely customers, even more, choice of fantastic original products. We have some very exciting plans for the future, some of which we'll be telling you about in the next few weeks. We might have started wee but our ambitions are big!