INDEPENDENT FOCUS: RETAILING
“If we don’t have it, you don’t need it!”
In the face of growing gentrification in Bristol, Hardware store owners, Mac and Simon, use political satire, pop culture references and tongue-in-cheek posters to keep themselves a cut above the rest. Kiran Grewal finds out more.
work colleagues from a previous job, they knew their comical genius and wit was exactly what the people of Bristol needed when completing a seemingly mundane task of picking up DIY supplies, and they have since supplied this in abundance. “Clifton Hardware was opened in 1994 as an expansion of another hardware business, called Cotham Hardware, for which Simon and I
C 20 DIY WEEK 23 MARCH 2018 lifton
established in 1994, was
bought
Hardware, and
taken over by Simon Fitzherbert and Mac Johnson in 2002. As
both worked. We purchased this shop from the previous owners in 2002 and have run it ever since,” says Mac. With both owners having a retail
background in wine, which is where they met as work colleagues, different circumstances led them to work together again in the hardware business.
“I went around the world for a year with my family and when I got back, I was looking for something to do, so I went to college – didn’t suit me, ended up working for this chap at the hardware store and he was opening up another branch in Clifton and he put me in it - so I ran Clifton from the beginning in 1994. “He then wanted someone to run the other branch in Cotham and Simon left Oddbins and went to join him over there, and when my wife died we decided to buy this one, and we’ve been here ever since.” Mac and Simon believe they stand
out from other businesses because they don’t have a traditional attitude to retail, and their ability to bounce off each other and use light hearted humour to engage passers-by, keeps them interesting and current. “This hails back to the days where we both worked for Oddbins and had
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