Last weekend saw gift shop Let’s Go Round Again in Wombourne celebrate its 20th milestone anniversary. “We had an amazing day supported by customers old and new and a fabulous team of shop ‘fairies’, plus a guest appearance by Adam Starr who did live Facebook and Instagram posts throughout the day, helping to drive customers into the shop,” owner Hilary Jones told GiftsandHome.net
Looking back to when she first bought the shop in 1999, Hilary added: “The industry has changed so much over the past 20 years, If we were still selling the kind of things we were selling then, we certainly wouldn’t be in business anymore. We started off very much as a specialist shop, selling limited editions from some of the biggest names in collectables – Harmony Kingdom, Lorna Bailey pottery, Cardew teapots, Wade, Kevin Francis ceramics and every brand of collectable teddy bear we could get our hands on, as well as Ty beanie babies. However, with the arrival of internet shopping, the collectable market changed, with the internet taking away the chase of actually finding the items that people were missing in their collections. Additionally, people started de-cluttering their houses.”
She continued: “However, 20 years on, we still sell product from Ty and Steiff, and it’s lovely to have these companies still in the shop after all these years. The nearest thing to a collectable that we sell now is the Willow Tree range of figurines from Enesco.”
She says that the highlight of the past 20 years has been winning a Greats Award in 2013. “It’s an amazing day to relive in my thoughts and I’m really proud of how far I’ve come since opening the shop with my mum in 1999 while still working part time at a ‘proper job’. We even took dressers and tables from home, so that we had enough display items to show off what we had to offer, but the customers came in and the story continues!”
Top: Hilary Jones, second on the right, is shown at last Saturday’s 20th anniversary celebrations at Let’s Go Round Again in Wombourne.
