Long serving independent retailer Lee Louise on Foregate Street have received an England Business Award naming them as the Best Gift Shop in Cheshire.
Faith Tindall . who has lived in Chester for 15 years, took over the custodianship of the shop 3 months ago in April. She says: ” Id been looking at buying a business for a while. Lee Louise was the first result after she googled businesses for sale in Chester. I came in and spoke to Julie who was the owner for 44 years, and we had a lot of conversations back and forth about what was the right thing to do.”
Faith left her corporate job of 20 years to follow her dreams of owning her own business. “Its a mixture of always wanting to run my own business, and the holistic aspect, the crystals, the witchy bit! The pieces of the jigsaw all came together.”
Accepting the award Faith commented that ” Lee Louise is much more than just a retail business it’s a community and this award is for everyone in that community
“I feel like I’m the custodian rather than the owner, I’m taking it through into the next stage. I definitely don’t want to lose the magic that its already got, but there are some new things I want to add, some new products. I do lots of energy healing, crystal work, reiki, I want to add on a lot of workshops, for me that’s the next stage of the shops evolution”
Reflecting on the strength of Chester’s independent scene, Faith comments : ” I think people have got to be brave in retail. I can see the potential of what we can do. Chester has always been built on independent businesses, we have a few key anchor stores but we need more people to go out and do something different! We get a lot of footfall and have been here a long time, so for the people that know us, its very much a destination shop. What I want to work on is , for the people that aren’t from Chester, establishing our tagline and what we offer. I’m not going to change the name because its the name of the two daughters of the original owners!” For a full history of Lee Louise see https://thechesterblog.com/2021/07/01/the-lee-louise-story/
The Chester blog 