CAFÉ PROVIDES A STROKE OF GENIUS FOR LOCAL GALLERY

Challenging trading conditions gave Karen Edwards the inspiration she needed to diversify her business which is now set to launch its own range of food and a new ceramics collection.

Following the closure of a number of high street businesses in Pittenweem last year, Karen used advice from Business Gateway Fife to secure almost £2k from the Fife Council Economic Development’s Town Centre Business Support Fund to create a café within her gallery, Funky Scottish, last August.

As a result the gallery, which turned 10 years old on April 1st, was able to create two part-time jobs and saw its turnover increase by 11% during peak trading months (August to October) compared to the same period the previous year.

She said: “I originally started the gallery as a collective in 2006 but when the credit crunch hit the artists who sublet space form me couldn’t justify the cost of travelling to the gallery so I took over all the space again. I started to buy in other stock to sell over and above the art work but people just didn’t have the spare income to invest like they used to.

“Those factors really affected the gallery and last year I was worried about the future. I’d always had a hankering to open a café and remembered receiving an email from Business Gateway Fife in 2014 about the grant scheme. I contacted them to see if it was still going and my adviser, Fiona Turnbull, was absolutely brilliant; she told me what I would be eligible for and helped me fill out the forms.”

Now, with business buoyant, the local artist is planning to launch a Costal Cookie range in time for this year’s Pittenweem Arts Festival and plans to unveil her new ceramic collection, Royal St Andrews in August.

The range will complement her popular Pittenweem Blue, a Scottish take on Dutch Delph, which she hopes to get manufactured on a larger scale to sell throughout Scotland – and potentially abroad.

She said: “I want to increase output and the only way to do that is to have the two collections manufactured, ideally somewhere in Fife. I have so many plans now that the business is thriving again. As well as Coastal Cookies I want to launch a Pittenweem food range, which would be a collaboration with my chef, who is a local baker.  She makes everything I sell in the café fresh each day and visitors come back time-and-time again to sample her food, especially her plum cake!

“I’m now planning to talk with my Business Gateway adviser to figure out what the next step will be to best to manage expansion. It really is an exciting time for Funky Scottish.”

Fiona Turnbull, Business Gateway Fife, said: “When trading became challenging, Karen was determined to make her local high street more attractive by adding a café so came to us for advice. Thanks to the Town Centre Business Support Fund she was able to install a new counter, display unit, fridge and shelves; she also redecorated the toilet and installed new flooring in the back gallery. With her business now flourishing we look forward to helping her realise her growth plans which include taking her collections nationwide.”

For more information on Funky Scottish visit www.funkyscottish.com

To find out more about our Town Centre Business Support Fund, please click here or to find out how we can help your business, contact us now on 01592 858333 or email success@bgfife.co.uk