End of era as The Pincushion closes
Maidenhead: Specialist store shuts up shop after 27 happy years
The owners of an independent Maidenhead shop supplying the community with its craft essentials are set to retire after a ‘great 27 years’ in the town.
The Pincushion, which is jointly owned by Maidenhead husband and wife Caroline and Des
Woodall, opened at the end of July 1995 in St Mark’s Crescent and is due to close its doors on Wednesday, August 31.
At the time of opening, Caroline, 61, appeared in the Advertiser sharing the business venture, which was started due to there being no shops locally dedicated to providing needlecraft supplies.
Opening initially as a needlecraft shop, the business evolved over the years to become more of a wool shop for knitting and crochet which also sold haberdashery and needlecraft supplies.
Discussing the reasons for opening the shop, Caroline said: “Knitting had gone out of favour by then and cross stitch was really big but there weren’t any shops locally at all.
“I was at home with two small children and thought, well there’s nothing else, I’ll open one myself.
“I just took a chance doing it and it went so well, it went on from strength to strength really and then knitting came back in fashion and now crochet’s come back in fashion, so we really switched over and went big in knitting and crochet.”
The pair also had a second shop in Windsor which was run by Des, 64, following his retirement, up until it closed eight years ago when he came to work alongside Caroline in the Maidenhead shop.
Highlighting her favourite memories from the past 27 years in Maidenhead, Caroline added: “Just meeting lots of customers and actually becoming friends with them, that’s what we’ll miss.”
She added that Maidenhead MP Theresa May has also previously visited the shop on two or three occasions.
“It’s been very good, We’ve had customers from all around the local area, we’ve even posted things around the world, and we’ve got postal customers around the UK as well that we’ve posted to, so it’s been a great 27 years,” Caroline added.
Explaining their reasons for retirement, Caroline added: “It’s the end of our lease and we just thought, well, now’s as good a time to go as any really.
“Unfortunately, over the last 10 years more and more people are buying things online and we didn’t want to go online.
“We didn’t want to be an online shop, we always wanted to be a proper bricks and mortar shop.”
Caroline added lots of customers have said that they will be coming to the shop to say goodbye during the last week.
She continued: “We’re going to miss the customers because there were some really lovely people. We will miss seeing all the people that we saw all the time.”
The shop is currently open on Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10am-12pm and 1pm-4pm and on Saturday from 10am-4pm.