Louise Carruthers: We're both trained guitar repairers, from that has come the guitar shop in which we serve customers, we sell guitars, second hand and vintage, most of the day is spent doing repairs but we do a lot of other things as well that involves running the whole business, so we're jacks of all trades.
Paula Russell: We like met at college and went on university together and em it led to - both ended up working in a guitar shop down in London and for various reasons we were working there, then it wasn't the happiest of places and we really enjoyed the work and em and we just thought, you know, why can't we kind of do it ourselves and had a wee kind of chat about it, and stuff like that, and we just kind of again, Louise was the more confident one and getting us both back up to Scotland basically start up our own business.
Louise Carruthers: The help from Business Gateway was invaluable and I don't think we could have quite done it without that type of help. I just - it wasn't available in the past to a lot of other businesses, but the fact that it's there and we can phone - we still use them today for certain things regarding aspects of business we're not sure about, employee law and all that kind of stuff, they're clued up on absolutely every aspect and they give you all this help and advice for free. I can't believe it actually exists for people like us - it's amazing.
Paula Russell: We actually, Louise and I, before we'd even had the premises or anything, we actually ended up, quite strange, we sat outside and, em, in the wee restaurant outside there, and we were joking about 'oh one day we might have a shop here you know', because we'd spent the whole day absolutely walking up and down Glasgow, handing out questionnaires to people.
We handed them out to people down in the streets, basically and you know tried to find out what they wanted in a guitar shop and after a few days we had a couple of gentlemen come in with guitars that we repaired for them and literally the rest after that was kind of word of mouth, them going and telling people and obviously they seemed happy with our work (laughs) and, em, and they went and told people and it kind of spread from there.
Eventually we did put together a wee flyer, which again we just went up and handed to people in the street and kind of tried to drag them down, but certainly in the beginning it was majority word of mouth.
Louise Carruthers: We started with two guitars in the shop, no strings, no nothing, just two guitars and Paula and I, and people were coming in and saying do you do repairs? And we'd get a guitar repair done and we were working before we'd even got our benches in the shop.
So it kind of escalated from there and slowly but surely we changed things and moved things around and had new counters built and eventually we've got to the stage where we're quite happy with our wee shop, really.
We had a lot of problems in the beginning with, em, being broken into and that, that was a hard time for us because we'd put so much into setting up the business, and to walk into work the next morning and find broken glass and guitars snatched from your window through the security that we had was quite disheartening.
I don't think there was any point in time where we thought that that was going to stop us learning the business, but it was certainly a big problem that we had to overcome, and so we invested £2000, in brand-new roller shutters which since then have served us really well but if we hadn't been taught that lesson early on we might have suffered worse now.
Paula Russell: There's a lot of comments about the website, there's a lot of people use it, but I think our business is quite individual in the sense that they realise over the years that we're not just a guitar shop and people don't seem to see us as just a guitar shop, so, there's many other music shops in Glasgow and in the country, but people don't necessarily come to us for the same things, you know, they see that we're quite unique, I think, particularly with the kind of stock that we have, secondhand and vintage items, the collectors' items.
Certainly a lot of enquiries and interest from people from all over the world emailing us and you know trying to purchase things or asking for help. It's not really an internet business in a sense, it's much more of a personal, I think it's the one to one that's certainly the most important thing.
The kind of people we have coming in, yesterday we had Scott from Sons And Daughters in and last weekend Alan and Gareth were in from Idlewild as well, and they bought a guitar to play at the Hogmanay celebrations on television, it's wee things like that, you're just like you pinch yourself, you can't believe that's what you do for, you know, a day's work. So it's very exciting, all of it's exciting.
The best thing about running your own business is that maybe you have good ideas when you're still employed, you know, you could maybe take more time off or you know kind of just do things slightly differently because 'if this was my own shop' kind of thing and things we always find is the opposite of that, you've only got yourself to motivate you you've only got yourself to push you, I think you give yourself less slack (laughs) than if you're actually employed by somebody and what they give you, so you can't get away with nothing if you're your own boss. (laughs)
But it certainly is one of those things we've had conversations with other people about and if you want to just make money then I think doing something thay you're really this passionate about isn't necessarily going to work you know, because it is about you wanting to do it and there's probably a lot of other things you could just do and have stacks of money sitting there kind of thing. We're, I think, quite happy in the sense that we've got enough money to kind of support ourselves on and give you a kind of decent standard of life and still be able to do something we want to do, really.
Louise Carruthers: Turnover wise, em, first year of trading was about forty eight thousand pounds which we thought was amazing at the time for what we had and what we could do but em because we've got two staff now as well as ourselves and because of Christmas just there, we had the best Christmas we've ever had which we thought amazing, we were really chuffed about it, it's brought the turnover up to about a £170,000 this year. Which for four people working in a small shop like this we think is pretty good.
I don't think I could ever work for anyone else now because I know that I can do it for myself and I can get out of bed in the morning and without somebody having to tell me to do that, and because I love my job and I love what I'm doing, I feel I'm in control of that and quite comfortable with it.
Paula Russell: If you're thinking of starting your own business I'd say just do it, you know, there is people out there, like the Business Gateway, PSYBT that you know if you go to them, pick up the phone to them, and they will be able to give you a bit of advice.
Louise and I had no clue about business plans or anything when we started out and that was all shown to us, basically and then just get as much figures you know and information as you can, arm yourself with information and just do it.
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