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Retailer Face To Face: Lulu Loves
LULU’S COME TO TOWN Louise Prydderch - Lulu to her friends - couldn’t be prouder of her new home interiors and home décor store, Lulu Loves in Stubbington. A year after it opened, it won The Greats 2018 Best Initiative category and is currently the ‘must visit’ shop on The Green in Stubbington, where customers often tell Louise and her team, “we want everything!” So what’s the secret of the shop’s success? PG&H went down to Hampshire to find out. ith a dad that presided over everything retail - from a pet shop to an estate agent - Louise Prydderch was clearly born to own her own shop. “At the age of eight, I was already helping dad to weigh, bag and price pet food, and by my early teens, I was a regular sales assistant at his various, retail ventures, which included a newsagent, during the school holidays,” Louise explains. After leaving school, she went to work at the Post Office, nabbing the top job of
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Top: Lulu Loves in Stubbington. Above: Louise Prydderch with Lucy Hamblin, manager of Lulu Loves, at The Greats in May where the shop won Best Retailer Initiative for its Hygge weekend. Below: Lulu Loves own brand luxury candles.
postmistress by the time she was 18, a job, she says, which combined her admin skills with her love of retail and her desire to have a customer facing career. Subsequently, following a spell working as an au pair in Boston, she came back to Hampshire to run a small gift and card shop, Forget Me Not, for her parents on The Green in Stubbington. However, when the owner of Evelyn’s Haberdashery, a large unit across The Green, retired, Louise’s father Don encouraged to go for it. “I had never sewn, knitted or crocheted in my life, but within two years I was teaching sewing lessons,” she recalls. When her father sadly passed away 17 years ago, Louise and her mum Margaret, now retired, joined forces retailwise, with Forget Me Not merging with Evelyn’s Haberdashery and retaining its name. “In 2011, we dropped the Evelyn’s name and invested in a full refit and re-branding as Forget Me Not,” continues Louise. I’m delighted to say that Forget Me Not has gone from strength to strength in the ensuing years and is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary.” So why the decision to open Lulu Loves in May last year, which made it into the finals of The Greats 2018 Best Newcomer South & Wales category? “I’d been wanting to open an interiors store for years, but somehow, the timing wasn’t right. Then, the shop next door became vacant and I grabbed the opportunity with both hands,” she enthuses. “I have a graphic designer friend called Caroline, and when we Progressive Gifts & Home Worldwide
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