Member Article

Sixty-year-old hardware store heats up the e-commerce market

A Tyneside new media agency has helped a family-run hardware shop, which has remained virtually unchanged in nearly 60 years, to enter the digital age with the launch of a new e-commerce website. Thorpe’s of Gosforth, which has been a fixture on Gosforth High Street since 1947 , is selling its range of fireside equipment and accessories to customers around the world at www.thefiresideshop.co.uk.

Peter and Colin Thorpe are the third generation of the family that have run the shop, which was set up by their grandfather, Edward, under two years after the end of the Second World War. The website was designed and developed by Newcastle-based The Studio, a collective of new media specialists providing content across a range of media.

Bruce Allinson, managing director of The Studio, said: “The project was a unique opportunity to use new technology and e-commerce to present a traditional family business to a wider audience. Few e-commerce sites can give the assurance of such a long established business so, while our CMS and e-commerce technology brings The Fireside Shop to a new market, the design has remained focused on Thorpe’s traditional values and marketing strategies. Something the Thorpe family have been getting right for over half a century.”

Peter Thorpe, manager of Thorpes of Gosforth, said: “The fireside business has grown and grown and grown over the past few years – so much so that it’s outgrown the physical space of the shop. “But on the web there’s no walls to the showroom, and no geographical limit to the numbers of people you can reach.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .