Local entrepreneur and Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for Tooting, Dan Watkins, hosted the Earlsfield ‘Love Your Local’ awards on 19th December. The initiative has been running for two months and helped connect residents with their local independent stores by encouraging them to nominate their favourite shops, restaurants and pubs.
Held at Bar 366 on Garratt Lane, attendees included local residents, businesses, local MP Justin Greening and Mayor Angela Graham, all of whom joined Dan in recognising the top ten most voted-for shops. Customer quotes about their local stores, which had been posted on the Love Your Local website, were also provided for all to read.
Addressing the audience, Dan commented, ’Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, employing local people and providing a huge diversity of products and services. The government has helped high street shops reduce their costs, through recent cuts in business rates, employer’s national insurance and corporation tax. I wanted to compliment this by helping our independent shops attract new customers and boost their revenues. Love Your Local has really engaged the Earlsfield community, with hundreds of residents and shops participating.’
The top 10 most nominated shops were:
- Impact Hair & Beauty - best hairdresser and overall winner
- Earlsfield Deli - best deli and runner-up overall
- Sea Horse Fish Bar - best take-away, in bronze medal spot
- Sugar Bag Blue - best gift shop
- The Pig & Whistle - best pub
- Bunka - best boutique
- Mel’s - best diner
- Amaranth - best restaurant
- Belle Amie - best cafe
- Bar 366 - best bar
Rod Turner, owner of winning shop Impact Hair & Beauty: ‘After a few weeks most of Earlsfield’s shops had one of the distinctive blue and white posters up in their window, so I’m not surprised it got such a good response. I’m really pleased for my team at Impact that so many of our customers recognised the great service we try to provide every day’.
Will McKinlay, an attendee from the Earlsfield Business Network (part of the Wandsworth Chamber of Commerce) said ‘We are trying to bring together the local business community so are delighted with Dan’s Love Your Local initiative, which has given us all a huge boost in the run up to Christmas’.
The awards event was featured in the Wandsworth Guardian and you can read the article here.
Following the success of the initiative, it has now been expanded to Balham and Tooting town centres, with the deadline for residents to nominate their most-loved shops very appropriately being Friday 14th February! To get involved, residents can visit www.LoveYourLocalShops.com, vote for their favourite store, and by doing so get entered into a prize draw.