Choices Local - Launch July-August 2017

Crouch End duo share their
Windmill journey
One lovely summers day, 2 friends sat in a Crouch End garden complaining about
the lack of places to buy their kids shoes. Kirsty, with her experience as a buyer for
Selfridges and Arancha, with her past life in customer management, and then 10
years as a childminder while she raised her kids, went from agreeing they should
provide the solution, to opening a shop in under 2 months! Anthony spoke to this
amazing duo for some further insight...
Wow – what a quick turn around...
Kirsty: Yeah, it was a short sharp shock.
We turned it around very quickly.
Arancha: I think it was better that way so
we didn’t really linger and think about what
we were doing so we just really had to get
on with it.
You turned everything around so
quickly. What did you look at in order to
go forward and know that you could do
this and put it together?
Kirsty: We looked at our surrounding area.
We worked out how many primary and
secondary schools there were. We found
out there's like 11 primary schools in a twomile
radius, so we knew there's enough feet
to put shoes on. We did a lot of market
research, did a lot of surveys with people
asking them about price sensitivity. We did
strength, weakness, you know, swat analysis
basically. And you know, we tried financial
forecasting based on the amount of stock
we'd have to buy and what profit we'd have
to make to keep us going for those first
tough couple of years.
How do you juggle your time because I
know you've both got families? Has it
changed much from when you started?
Arancha: It definitely has. I mean, when
we first started it was just Kirsty and me in
the shop and we both have two kids and
they were all super excited to be in the back
of the shop and they had a little sofa and
they were all playing. Obviously as they got
a bit older, the novelty wore off and they
did not want to be in the shop anymore. As
we grew, we were able to afford an assistant
who would work throughout the week and
then Kirsty and I would take turns, so we
could take our kids home two evenings after
school. We had to spend some time with
them as well, because the shop has been our
baby and for the first two years, we spent so
much time and energy on it that you had to
get the balance right with our family and try
not to neglect them too much.
What impact did it have on your home
life?
Kirsty: I think it just really meant that we
weren’t there as much, and both our
partners work odd hours. Arancha's partner
16 CHOICES Local Haringey