Susan puts her money in the bank as she invests in her Artisan brand with new Stone premises

While many of us were dashing around making our last minute Christmas preparations, Susan Hughes of The Artisan Boutique collected the key to the former Barclays Bank on Stone High Street.

Barclays left the bank in July 2021, and we wondered what was to become of the former bank. Two previously vacated banks, NatWest and HSBC, have seen second leases of life, and it was fantastic to hear that the former Barclays branch had a new owner within six months of closing!

On the 17th December, Susan Hughes, owner of the Artisan Boutique on Radford Street, picked up the keys for her new investment! Covid has had and still does have a devastating and long term effect on local businesses, but with Susan’s fantastic self-belief and her faith in the good people of Stone, she is personally banking on making the new premises a success.

Susan opened the original Artisan Boutique in 2018 with the aim of unlocking the Creative Soul of Stone! Over the past three years, Susan has grown and developed her creative empire, supporting other local creators, inspiring others and creating a hub for people to participate in a whole host of creative workshops.

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Susan told A Little Bit of Stone about the next step in her business’s adventure:

“I am so pleased to announce that we are moving The Artisan Boutique down to the High Street where it will be complemented with a coffee shop called The Artisan Kitchen.

We intend one side of the downstairs to be Yarn, fabric, haberdashery, Artificial Floristry and crafts with a table for a daily craft taster session to be held. Regulars need not worry, we will of course re-launch our wide variety of workshops and knit and natter/sewing groups.

We are hoping to have pop-up Artisan stalls within the space on a regular basis, with Emma Joustra already wanting to come on board.

The plans for the upstairs are under wraps for now, we have something exciting in the planning and once it’s definite we will be ready to share them!

I can confirm we will be having beauty therapy in one of the rooms and we also have a small room that we will rent out on an ad-hoc basis that will be suitable for counselling, small office space and of course we will continue to do our Tarot/Mediumship session in this space.”

In terms of the project plan, Susan told us:

“Our team is working hard refurbishing the inside of the building and we hope to be open at the start of April 2022! There’s a lot of hard work and investment going into the building and I can’t wait to show the people of Stone what we have to offer right in the heart of the town.”

You can follow The Artisan Boutique on Facebook, where Susan has been sharing the work in progress pictures!