Given the current economic challenges, business success stories are few and far between but Elementals Magickal Emporium are launching their online shop almost exactly 2 years from when they opened their shop in Market Street, Wymondham.

Co-Owner, Samantha Wootton says, “Deciding to open a retail shop in the middle of a global crisis was a huge gamble, but the pandemic had a devastating impact on my then current business, so we decided it was time for a complete change.”

Husband and co-owner Gary Wootton added “Like any adversity we face in life, you have to look for the positives. The unexpected upside for us was that we now had an opportunity to build a business that reflected our lifestyle. We never would have made that step without the impact that the pandemic had on us”

Pigeonholing Elementals is not easy, it’s not your typical high street store. They sell “products for the mind, body and soul” which include crystals, tinctures, oils, candles and wellbeing products, but visit the shop and you’ll also find dragons, witches and even Viking shields and Mead!

“There are a lot of different products on our shelves” says Samantha, “we’ve built wholesale relationships with over 100 different suppliers because we want to buy from small independent UK based businesses as much as possible”.

Like many bricks and mortar businesses, Elementals have now looked to the wider opportunity that trading online can bring. Samantha explains, “we didn’t want to go online without first establishing a retail presence, both for credibility, and also we prefer the personal experience that only a retail shop can provide. However we have to be realistic, and the costs and uncertainty of retailing are a worry, so we have to look to expand to help ensure the future of the business.”

“We thought building an online store would be easy after everything we’d been through with the shop, but we were wrong. The more we looked into the options, the more we got confused and the costs just kept going up. Then, we heard about a scheme that South Norfolk Council had instigated to provide assistance to shops like ours wanting to go online. We got in touch with the council and found that they had appointed a Norwich based digital company to provide training on how to build an online store.”

“Happily, we were approved from a shortlist of potential businesses for the scheme “South Norfolk E-Commerce Platform Build Programme”. We met with Nathan from Quickfire Digital who provided ground-up training that enabled us to build our own online store!”

“The whole process was straightforward and the information we gained has been invaluable, we wouldn’t be ready to go live now had we not been able to benefit from this scheme.”

 So, thanks to a council initiative and local business collaboration, on the 17th October Elementals Magickal Emporium’s new online store opened for business, so if you can’t drop in in person, be sure to check out their amazing products online and treat yourself to a little bit of magick! elementalsmagickalemporium.com