8 Reasons To Support Your Local Shop This Independents Day

Taking place this year on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th July, Independents Day is a UK wide campaign to help support local businesses and celebrate the independently owned shops on our high streets. Indie businesses will be sharing their stories, offering discounts and special events and encouraging you to visit and shop with them over the Independents Day weekend so we thought we'd take this opportunity to share why we think you should support your local independent shop (us!) and how shopping small can make a huge difference.

1. Browse a carefully curated range, hand-picked by us

Everything you find at Salt Art Supply has been chosen by the two of us, influenced by the tools and materials that we’re passionate about, as well as the brands and products that come highly recommended from our customers.

Our shelves are stocked with art supplies from well-known brands such as Winsor & Newton, Faber-Castell, Daler-Rowney, Royal Talens, Essdee, Posca, Pro Arte and more, as well as beautiful stationery and greetings cards from independent makers. While we try and make sure we have everything you might need for drawing, painting, printmaking and crafting, we also love choosing items that are a fun and maybe a little bit unexpected, like sketchbooks with colourful covers, erasable animal gel pens, quirky journalling stickers, and pink Salt Art Supply pencils.

If you’re looking for a particular brand or material that we don’t yet stock, let us know and we’ll see if we can add it to our range or order something in just for you!

2. See, feel and test products in real life

Feel the different paper weights, test out the pens and pencils, see the full range of paint colours and choose the perfect brush for your next project. Browsing for art supplies and stationery in person lets you see exactly what you’re purchasing and compare different options, so you know you’re choosing what’s best for your creative practice. It's hard to decide on a product sometimes when you're shopping online, so come in and see exactly what you're getting before you buy!

3. Support the small businesses & makers we stock

Shopping with us directly supports the small businesses, artists and designers we stock, giving us the opportunity continue to order from, support and champion these makers and creatives. Many of the ranges in our shop are sourced from independent businesses — all our greetings cards are sourced from UK based illustrators and design studios, including local artist Matt Johnson, London based riso studio Scout Editions and illustrator Emma Pearce who owns Sister Paper Co, as well as the large majority of our illustrated stationery including our washi tapes by local designer Claire Paul, sticker sheets by Grumpy Nook and notebooks and planners by Ohh Deer. 

Several of our art supplies are also from smaller, often family-run business based in the UK — including Coates, who produce natural willow charcoal in Somerset, Pink Pig who manufacture our mixed media and watercolour sketchbooks in West Yorkshire, and Pro Arte whose team of artisans have been crafting artists' paintbrushes in the north of England for over fifty years.

4. Discover more sustainable & eco-friendly options

As an independent art and stationery shop, we're able to curate a selection of products we love and that hit our core values of sustainability, affordability and quality — making it easier for you as a creative to have a more eco-friendly and considered art practice.

We try our best to source high quality, long-lasting art and stationery supplies, and we're always on the lookout for more eco-friendly options — for example we offer gouache paints in glass jars instead of plastic tubes, source sturdy ceramic palettes instead of plastic ones and only stock studio-safe solvents over turpentine and white spirit. We'll always choose a plastic-free or packaging-free option if it's available and suitable for the product, and we always try and re-use the boxes and packaging we receive from our suppliers to post our online orders so our business produces as little waste as possible.

5. Get personalised advice and recommendations

As two illustrators with a background in art and design, we've used the large majority of the items we stock, and so we're more than happy to offer our advice if you need it! Whether you've got a particular project in mind or you’re looking to take up a new creative hobby or medium, we’re always on hand to share our tips and tricks or help you get started. We love seeing and hearing what you're getting up to as well as helping in any way we can!

6. Save with our loyalty card scheme or student discount

As well as a 10% discount for students and Pard Card holders (a locals discount card for Cornish residents), we offer loyalty cards in the shop to encourage you to come back and shop with us. We stamp cards for every purchase over £10, and every 5 stamps earns you a discount — perfect for when you need to stock up on your art and stationery supplies!

7. Support your local town and high street

We might be biased but we think Falmouth has a pretty great selection of small businesses! Pick up fresh flowers from Lowena, choose your next read from the Falmouth Bookseller, take a creative class at Maya’s, browse art by local creatives at Morgan’s Gallery, get everything you need for your next knitting project from Stitches and Cream and enjoy a coffee at Olfactory. It’s the perfect town for a day out with so many options for mooching, eating and shopping, all while supporting the people in your community who make the local high street so vibrant.

8. Help us bring our art & stationery shop dreams to life!

It’s just two of us running Salt Art Supply, so when you shop with us you're directly supporting us — your money goes straight into restocking our supplies, introducing new materials, paying our bills and helping us take on opportunities to grow our small business. We're the people who greet you when you come in, answer your emails, pack up your orders and everything else in between, and we absolutely love running Falmouth's art & stationery shop for you!

We’ve worked really hard to bring this small business to life, but we wouldn’t have been able to get this far without the support from you, our regular customers and our local community. Thank you so much for all your support — it means the absolute world to us.

How can I support my local independent shops?

Choosing to shop independent, whether in person or online, makes a huge difference to small businesses like ours. Even a small purchase like a greetings card, a pencil or a cup of coffee will make much more of an impact to an independent business owner than it will to a franchise CEO. However, you don't have to always spend money to help support small businesses — liking, commenting and sharing their posts on social media, telling your friends and family about them and leaving positive reviews are all ways to support your local high street shops, bakeries, coffee shops, and restaurants. 

Want to visit our little art and stationery shop this Independents Day?

We'd love to welcome you in! You can find us at 24 Killigrew Street in Falmouth, Cornwall, right opposite the Moor car park and Falmouth's main bus stops. If you'd like to see more from us, come and join our community online — find us @saltartsupply on Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook.