Diary of a Shopkeeper, 29th June 2024

It was wonderful to read in this week’s Postbag the letter from Gill and Adrian Secombe of Guildford about their recent visit to Orkney, and their search for local produce. They went away, they wrote, with over £1,000 worth of purchases. Benefitting from their choices were not just the shop owners and staff, but the local businesses who made the produce – whether biscuits, jam, beer, gin, sausages, smoked fish or much else. And of course the farmers and fishers who grew and caught the raw materials.

Buying locally-made goods starts a domino effect of financial benefit throughout the community. A packet of oatcakes doesn’t cost much, and the benefit may only be pennies, but ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle’. Every ten pence retained in the county is better than ten pence ending up in the coffers of some multinational oatcake conglomerate.

If I have a tip for Gill and Adrian on their next visit, it would be not to start your search for Orkney produce in the supermarkets. Take a wander along the street – a pleasure in itself! For milk or fish, try The Brig Larder. For baked goods, Argos. For meat, Donaldson’s or Williamson’s. For sweets and ice cream, Sinclair’s. For beer, the Peedie Bottle Shop. For whisky, Highland Park. For gin, the Orkney Distillery. For just about everything made locally, Judith Glue’s. For just about anything made anywhere, Shearer’s. I’ve heard of a wee cheese and wine shop hidden at the end of a close that has a pretty good selection of local produce too.

And that’s just Kirkwall. Local shops and businesses scattered across the mainland and isles support local producers, and we should support them. If I’ve forgotten to mention anyone, I apologise: it’s a sign of how many excellent local shops Kirkwall alone has that it’s hard to remember them all. So, thank you local shopkeepers, staff and producers, and thank you Gill and Adrian, and all other visitors and Orcadians who support this vital part of our economy.

Another letter in the Postbag, on 6th June, made less happy reading. Headed, ‘Eye-watering prices’, Ken Bennett of Lancashire’s letter complained about the cost of local goods, including £27 for a tray and £20 for a knitted hat. It’s sad to hear of anyone having a bad time when visiting Orkney, but I don’t think the criticisms bear much examination.

Consider the knitted hat, for instance. Of that £20, 20% (£4) goes immediately to HMRC in VAT. Wool must be bought, and a knitter must knit. How long does it take to knit a hat? That depends on the design and whether it’s machine or hand knitted. But with the legal minimum wage being £11.44 per hour, even half an hour’s work costs £5.72. Let’s be optimistic and say it costs £10 for the knitter to pay themselves for 30 minutes, to buy their wool, and to save a few pennies for new knitting needles and electricity. That means the shopkeeper appears to make £6 profit. But out of that initial gross profit, the shopkeeper must pay rent, rates, insurance, utilities, bank charges, and other overheads. And of course staff costs (again, at a minimum of £11.44 for employees aged 21 or over.) All in all, I estimate the shopkeeper would be lucky to be making £1 of net profit from that locally knitted hat. The only thing that’s eye-watering about the price of the hat is how low it is.

Ah well, shoppers are always going to wish goods were cheaper, and businesses are always going to wish they could charge just a little more. It’s not a new problem. In fact, I’m reminded of the description of Kirkwall shops in an earlier publication:

‘The whole of the shopkeepers, almost without exception, are accused of taking exorbitant profits on all the articles in which they deal; and it must be confessed, that grocery foods of all sorts, calicoes, hardware, and in short, whatever is disposed of in shops, is sold at a much higher price than in most other places.  But when it is considered that they must purchase all their commodities at a very distant market, and pay high freight, insurance, and other charges for their importation; and that, in order to answer the demand of a multitude of people, they are under the necessity of laying in a large stock at once, consisting of a variety of articles, which are often so long on hand as to be damaged or almost lost altogether, the charge will appear in a great measure unfounded, and their profits by no means so exorbitant and unreasonable.’

That comes from George Barry’s History of the Orkney Islands. It was published in 1805.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 27th June 2024. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.