60 Makers, One Shop, and a Wee Shelf of Rope

There is a shop on Barclay Street in Stonehaven with about sixty makers in it. Since the first of September, one of those shelves has been mine.

It is 57 centimetres wide. That is the whole thing. Fifty seven centimetres of shelf in a wee coastal town fifteen miles down the road from the workshop, and I have been more chuffed about it than almost anything else that happened this year.

Here is why.

Why a shelf beats another thousand followers

I post a lot. Reels, photos, the whole carry on. Some of it does numbers. Almost none of it does what a shelf does.

Online, somebody sees a photo of a belt and has to decide, in about a second and a half, whether a stranger on the internet is telling the truth about how long it will last.

In a shop, they just pick it up.

They feel the weight of the rope. They can see the stitching is not hiding anywhere. They notice the buckle does not feel like a toy. Nobody has to trust me, because the thing is sat right there in their hand doing the arguing for me.

That is the whole game with recycled gear. The word recycled gets scrolled past. A rope that already held somebody on a wall, sitting in your palm, does not.

Where to find climbing rope gifts in Scotland

This is the honest answer to a question I get asked a fair bit. Until now it was mostly the website, or catch me at a market.

Now there is a third answer. Havens Treasures, 18 Barclay Street, Stonehaven. Rachel and Euan run it, and they have built something properly good in there. About sixty small makers under one roof, all of them real people, none of it imported filler.

So if you are after climbing rope gifts in Scotland and you would rather hold a thing than squint at a photo of it, go and have a nosey. Take your time. Buy something from somebody else on the way past my shelf, that is grand by me. Every quid spent in that building goes to a real person, and that is the whole point of the place.

If Stonehaven is a bit far, the recycled climbing rope belts and everything else are all on the site.

What actually made it onto the shelf

Fifty seven centimetres does not hold much, so I had to choose. That turned out to be a useful exercise.

The rope loop and hold keychains went on first, because they are the thing folk pick up without thinking about it. Five pounds, made from exactly the same rope as everything else. Nothing on that shelf is the cheap version of anything.

The climbing rope coasters went on too. Four pounds each, or 14.99 for a set of four. They are the one thing in the range people buy as a gift and then quietly come back for a set of their own.

And belts, obviously. Always belts. Made to your actual waist size, 22 to 50 inches, out of rope that spent years being trusted with somebody's life.

Everything else is over on available now, including the bits that were never going to fit on 57 centimetres of pine.

The bit I keep relearning

Every time I do this, a market stall, a shop, a shelf, the same thing happens. I learn more in one afternoon of watching people pick things up than I do in a month of staring at analytics.

The shelf is a three month run to start with. If it works, we keep going. If it does not, I will tell you that too, because I would rather be honest about the bits that flop than pretend everything is a win.

But right now there is a wee bit of an Aberdeen workshop sat in a Stonehaven gift shop, made out of rope that was booked for landfill. That feels like the right direction.

And if you run a shop, a wall, or a wee corner of somewhere that could hold 57 centimetres of retired rope, come and talk to me. I am always up for another shelf.

Stay classy and remember,
Make Waste Useful.

George