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Retailer Face To Face: Between The Lines
Location, Location,
Location Above: Lindsey and Florian Kleinlercher, owners of Between The Lines. Left:The newly re-furbished Midhurst outlet which was originally opened as Norman Brine by Lindsey’s father in 1964. Below: Wellbeing is a growing sector both for adults and children.
With retail closures one of the biggest front page stories this year, it’s refreshing to hear that independent gift and card multiple Between The Lines - a finalist in The Greats 2018 Best Specialist Multiple Gift Retailer category - is going from strength to strength. Far from closing shops, owners Lindsey and Florian Kleinlercher have opened three new shops this year, with four underway for 2019 - the year that the company celebrates its 30th anniversary. So what’s been the secret of their success? PG&H caught up with Lindsey and Florian to find out.
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hen Lindsey met Florian in 1988, it was the beginning of an enduring personal and business partnership that has continued for some 30 years. Recalls Lindsey, “my father owned Norman Brine, a bookshop in Midhurst, West Sussex, that also sold a small selection of stationery and cards, as well as prints by local artists. As children, my brother and I were always in there and helping out - we got iced buns as a thank you! - and in the mid-80s, after a spell as a nurse in Saudi Arabia, I started doing the buying which included putting in some giftware, and also ran my own card
stores in the South of England - mostly in market and commuter towns - with a further four stores opening in 2019. (Pepperpot Cards and Norman Brine have subsequently been rebranded as Between The Lines, with Pepperpot Cards also relocating to the centre of town, and Norman Brine recently undergoing a huge refurbishment). The concept of the business today is reflected in the strapline: ‘to celebrate the joy of giving’. “It’s behind everything we do,” Lindsey explains. “Buying a gift for someone releases those feelgood endorphins because it’s such a great feeling to see the joy on someone’s face when they receive something lovely.” Typically, many Between The Lines midweek customers are mums with buggies, with families coming in to shop together at the weekend. (The average spend in store is around £11). “Customers often come in for
shop, the Pepper Pot in Godalming. Deciding to computerise the system, I asked my then boyfriend Florian, who was an IT specialist, to help me with entering all the products we stocked. We worked relentlessly till 4 in the morning, and all of a sudden, the computer spectacularly crashed! Understandably, I burst into tears, and it was at that moment that Florian asked me to marry him!” In fact, it proved to be the catalyst that propelled Lindsey and Florian to launch their first Between The Lines outlet in Alton in 1989, the year they married. Over three decades, the portfolio has grown to 16 Progressive Gifts & Home Worldwide
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