Emma Smalley is a maker, children’s book author, tea shop and gallery owner, and all-round curious soul with one of the most gorgeous websites I have ever seen. I had a fascinating conversation with Emma about her latest venture ‘Temporary Measure’, based in the Keswick in the heart of the stunning Lake District in northern England. She tells us about Lakeland village life, and creating a life she lives on her own terms.
1. What is the most precious thing about having your own gallery and tearoom?
Apart from providing a useful outlet for a serious addiction to fine china, the most important thing to me about having temporary measure is the freedom to work for myself because I am appallingly bad at being told what to do, and also because I get to work along side my family, which is something I count my lucky stars for everyday.
2. How did you choose where to open it?
‘Temporary Measure‘ started out in Manchester, trading from a suitcase and then a market stall and then a little shop. It’s a great city to start a business with loads of support networks and craft organisations and myself and my business partner at the time won the city’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and also the North West Spirit of Enterprise Award. The move to Keswick in the Lake District came about when I made the difficult decision to end the business partnership and carry on the company alone.
Keswick is somewhere that has been a constant place of happiness to me. As a family we grew up living in various cities and towns but we came to Keswick every weekend we could and had some of our best times here. It is just a beautiful place. People here tend to be happy because they are either on holiday or are smart enough to live in a place where people come for their holidays. So I said to my other half, “What you need to do is sell your house and take me to The Lakes. It’s great there you’ll love it, they have sheep and wellingtons.” We lived in lots of temporary places including a leaking caravan until we found a little barn near a lake that we could actually afford and we have been telling ourselves what a very clever idea it was ever since!
From a business perspective it wouldn’t have looked like the smartest decision. I left behind an established customer base and all my contacts and suppliers, but I’m not really one for over thinking decisions. The fact that life is short and time’s a wasting is my constant mental screen saver (except when it’s the theme tune from The Monkeys.) So although the business rates and rents here are insane, and towns like Keswick that live from tourism are either full to bursting or completely empty except for a few locals running up and down the street shouting “Woo hoo everyone’s gone home!”, you get used to living seasonally and taking the rough with the smooth. And every time you look out the window or take the dog for a walk or go for a swim in the river you remember why you have to push your luck sometimes.
3. Where did the idea for your first children’s book come from?
All the work in temporary measure, all the cards and travel canvases and accessories involve text, they are a way for me to write for a living, which is what I do best. I hope it’s what I do best, it could be go go dancing in which case I’ve wasted a lot of time. Many of the stories look back over travels or times spent or childhood experiences and perspectives, so to write something directly for children was something I had always wanted to do. I was lucky enough to have an amazing childhood which I will be eternally grateful for. It has meant the world to me and left me with the childlike conviction, which I can’t seem to shake off despite all the hideous evidence to the contrary, that anything is possible and the world is yours even if it’s just for a short time.
It’s a feeling that my other half reminded me of when I met him. He has led an extraordinary life and despite being the most difficult man that ever lived, who was sent here to drive me entirely mad, I saw in him that feeling of power and possibility that I wanted to write about for children. He is also quite possibly the oddest source of inspiration for a story about a rabbit.
At the same time as writing a children’s book went to the top of my list of things to do, my whole family moved up here and my mum began knitting for us. She is the most amazing knitter and she was the one who created the lovely rabbit that became the main character in my first children’s book ‘once upon a time when I was a rabbit and there was nothing I couldn’t do…’
4. How did you set about getting it published?
Our first thought was just to get it done and printed up so we could sell it in the shop and see if our own customers liked it. So we set about learning everything we needed to learn to get a book published, which is becoming increasingly easy thanks to the internet, and saved us a lot of time waiting on the painfully slow publishing industry. The response to the book was so great and the products that we built around it such as the ceramics and the organic fairtrade children’s wear and toys became our best selling range. It’s attracted the interest of quite a few publishing agents and we are now selling from lots of other galleries and shops. We have nearly finished the next book in the series, ‘Once upon a time when I was the biggest big bear in the whole of the wide world…’ which will be available in the next few months, so I’m really glad we went through the whole process as it’s always the fastest way to learn anything.
5. Your business has many different streams – the teashop, stationery, knitwear, ceramics, commissions, story writing – how do you juggle them all?
It was a real struggle when we first moved up here, there was literally never enough time in the day. Keswick is lovely in that everyone who lives here knows everyone else, which can take a lot of getting used to if you are from a city. You can’t cross the road while pulling a face at the terribly annoying man by your side without someone coming up to you later in the day saying “Saw you two having a row before. Is everything okay?” And on top of that most people who visit here are on their holidays and have a lot of time on their hands, so you have days where absolutely every person you come in contact with wants a nice chat about the weather and/or an exchange of life stories. This is generally lovely but sometimes you can be waffling on to someone about the rain again and inside your head is a voice shouting “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH WORK I HAVE TO DO? SERIOUSLY. I HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE. I REALLY DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS CONVERSATION ABOUT RAIN.” It is a strange situation to be in when excessive levels of friendliness can prevent you from getting your work done.
I got lucky though when my family all moved up here, and now I have Team Smalley working with me it has become a lot more manageable. My parents have always been in business so they are invaluable to me. Writing stories I can do, book keeping and business management I do my absolute best at but am genuinely rubbish at. In fact it’s embarrassing how much I rely on them! Here is the truth… My mum does most of our knitting and runs our fabric department, as well as being my walking to-do-list, she notices things that I don’t always register or file under ‘forget this immediately’. Without my dad there would be no light bulbs in the shop or tea in the tearoom, my older sister makes all our organic cakes. My younger sister helps out with filing and admin. My brother makes all our canvas frames and also the best playlists and the best coffee, he is like the coffee whisperer. He puts me to shame, I am the worst waitress. My customers humour me and say it’s part of the charm but it’s not, I am just a terrible waitress. My other half makes our candles and claims that all the best ideas are his. See, I couldn’t do without them! I am hoping that one day I will be able to just skip around the shop…
6. Your website is beautiful! How did you come up with the idea of its design?
Thank you, I’m so glad you like it! We wanted to give people a little temporary measure experience on line and so we recreated the shop using the same techniques as we did in the rabbit book, layering drawing with textiles and photographs. It took forever! But hopefully we have a website that people will enjoy and find something new in every time they go back.
7. You seem to have created a life you are living on your own terms, in a wonderfully free way. What tough choices have you had to make along the way to allow you to do this?
I think the toughest choice for most people setting up a business is abandoning the financial security of a proper job, but I have been self employed since I quit university and my family has always been self employed so really I don’t know any better! It is always hard to live through the tricky times like recessions and keep hope in the future when you see people all around you closing up, but it is also amazing what you can make work if you need to. When customers ask how I came to have such an unusual shop I always say, “It’s the only thing I can do, so it’s a good job it works.” Well, most of the time anyway!
Quitting university was a tough choice because of all the social expectations of bright kids getting degrees-there is always the pressure from friends and well meaning people telling you that you are ruining your life and will regret it for ever yada yada. But it just wasn’t for me and it’s not for a lot of people. We should really be encouraging entrepreneurs not pushing degrees that don’t always improve peoples chances of finding a decent way to make a living. Entrepreneurs are the ones who create employment.
Even when I left university I knew I would find something to do with myself. As I mentioned earlier I am prone to having a completely unsupportable faith that things will work out for the best. Blind optimism and a short memory works every time I tell you.
8. What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting out on their own?
Life is short and times a wasting. Take advice and make sure you have people who will support you in the areas that are not your strong points (like an entire family for example!) but mainly be brave and get on with it. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you won’t but you will learn more than you ever thought possible and it will certainly be an experience. It’s impossible not to get caught up in the difficulties and the stress but try not to worry too much ‘because as everybody knew all along this was only ever just a temporary measure…’
9. What is the big dream for you and your creative business?
The fact that I get to do what I do for a living is something that never ceases to make me feel like one of the luckiest people on the planet, although my other half is always telling me that you make your own luck. And so I dream of being able to continue, of more children being read stories I have written that may one day help to turn them into hopeless optimists, and I dream of being able to repay Team Smalley for everything they have done, and then finally retiring to become an infamous Lakeland recluse who talks to the birds and wears too much blusher.
To find out more about Emma and ‘temporary measure’ see her lovely website here.
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