Saturday, December 24 - Sunday, December 25, 2005
The.idea
of visiting Toys'R'Us is one·of
I
total horror
| ~ | SELMA MONCRIEF |
OWNER OF A TRADITIONAL TOY SHOP (32, lives in Forest Row) ,
| . . | Appalled at the quality of toys on the High Sfreet, Selma and |
her three business partners run Bramble Comer, a traditional toy shop In Forest Row, which sells everything from wooden forts and spinning tops to skittles and china tea sets
We opened the shop more than a year ago because we couldn't find anywhere to buy toys which were harmless and encouraged children to use their imagination. Some
of us have children ourselves and we were hugely frustrated at never being able
to find anywhere which stocked enough toys for all ages.
These days, a lot of children's toys seem to be geared towi!rds Disney and are all about licenced merchandising. They're commercial and often extremely ugly
- sometimes really scary.
In this day and age, It's hard enough for children to be children anyway, with everything moving so fast. I can't think many children will have any memories of childhood if they've been stuck in front of a TV or computer all day.
Toys'R'Us fllls~·me with absolute horror. Just the thought of going to a great big hangar of a building. It's impersonal. The customer service in this country seems to be going down the pan. When you ask a question, you often get a surly teenager telling you the product isn't in their department. Well, how about pointing you in the right direction?
We serve here all the time and It has a village shop atmosphere~ And unlike Toys'R:l)s, which plays completely inappropriate pop music and seems more like
a nightclub than a toyshop, we don't have any music whatsoever. You can simply
hear the noise of children chattering and it's lovely.
We thought we couldn't be the only people who felt this way, so we decided, "Let's go for it," and sourced the most unusual and traditional toys on the market. We have modern toys but they're quality ones, with an emphasis on imaginative play.
We sell everything from little pull-along toys to miniature kitchens - all beautifully made out of wood, with real cooking utensils, aprons and chef hats, which make children feel
like miniature adults. The thing with toys is that manufacturers often try to make things look really toyish but, more often than not, children want to play with adult things. If you're out
in the garden, they want to play with your spade rather than their bright orange one.
We've ended up having things made especially for us. For example, we stock miniature' adult tools and real wheelbarrows, rakes, spades and brooms, which are the exact colour of proper, adult ones - just smaller in size.
When we started out, we wondered, "Are were doing this for us and are the children going to like it? Perhaps they really are gagging to have Joys sold on the High Street?" But it has proved quite the opposite. The best.compliment ever is when children are walking out of the door, saying: "Mummy; that 'was the best toy shop I've ever been to in my whole life."
The shop appeals to tiny little ones ,right up to great grandparents because it's a trip down memory lane.";'
Our toys are manufactured worldwide and we've sourced them from the US and all over Europe. Mainland Europe IS, ,a particularly good source because it still
| manufactures nice, wooden toys._, | ' .','<". |
One of our consistent best-sellers are mlnlat,!re cookers made out of wood. People are just bowled over by them. And for boys, the wooden forts, knights and dressing-up costumes have been conSistently good sellers.
We painted and decorated the shop on a shoestring budget because it's quite
a gamble starting a business from scratch. We kept it as rustic as possible and were sensitive to the period of the building.
The premises used to be an old butcher's shop. It had been empty for 12 years
so there was an awful lot of work to do. It needed rewiring, plumbing and completely redecorating. Even the ceilings were falling in.
There has been huge media Interest in Bramble Corner. It had only been open
a couple of months when Country Living asked if it could do a feature. And since then, we've also been interviewed by The Rnancial Times and French television.
The last few weeks have been mad. The shop's been buzzing non-stop and the telephone hasn't stopped ringing. It's been all hands on deck, seven days a week. But it's lovely. When it's busy, thriving and buzzing with people, that's what
makes it come alive.
interview: Angela Wintle picture: Jim Holden
Weekend 5
it's my