Viva Lewes Issue #134 November 2017

BUSINESS NEWS
A few weeks back I was walking down Cliffe
High Street and an elderly couple walked the
other way. It was obvious from their manner
they were day-trippers. “Ooh look,” said the
woman. “They’ve got a Bill’s.”
Bill’s, of course, is a Lewes invention which
has spread across the country, but at the
moment we’ve got far more imports than exports,
brand wise, and it seems the floodgates
are opening when it comes to chains arriving
in town. The latest news on this front is that
our THIRD Costa opened in October in the
station building; Jigsaw is only a couple of
pieces from completion as I write and might
well be trading when you read this column.
Wetherspoon’s seems to have been put on
hold, but for how long? We seem to be becoming
a destination town: the danger is that
we will start to look and feel like all the other
towns who’ve been similarly invaded.
The big hope, of course, is that the newcomers
attracted into Lewes by the chains will
also check out our independents, but we’ve
got to be wary of some sort of tipping point. I
don’t think we’ve necessarily reached that yet,
and thankfully more idiosyncratic indies are
still starting up in town. So it’s a big welcome
to Lovely&co (above, left), opened by Enzo
and Lucy, who’ve been running an online
business from a warehouse near Aldi – and
before that in Hove – and are moving into
retail, too, in the spot where Brenda traded
in the Needlemaker’s. In the same unit, on
the corner of Market Street and Market
Lane, Tania Borowski is opening her new
functional medicine clinic and ‘concept store’,
on November 6th. It’s also worth mentioning
that The Print Centre, on Station Street,
is being taken over by Mark and Jim, who
already worked there under Lucy, who’s off
to concentrate on her social media business.
They’ve invested in new equipment, meaning
they can do better quality prints – for artworks,
for example – and bigger orders.
When you’re down Cliffe way, take a look at
Riverside (above, right), which has completed
its facelift, and looks very splendid, making
the most of its Ouse-side position. Moving a
little out of town, we’ve been told that The
Rainbow in Cooksbridge has been taken over
and is open again after closing in April, which
had left the village without a pub. Good luck
to all concerned.
And finally, talking about Lewes exports,
as we were at the beginning of this column,
we’ve heard that WE Clark, one of Lewes’
oldest businesses, is opening a new branch of
their jewellery shop in Uckfield. It’s a long
way from their neighbours Bill’s (75 branches
and counting; last year they served 7.5 million
customers) …best of luck to them in their new
endeavour. Alex Leith
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