Enniscorthy 2015

 

Making The Most Of Peak Times

The organisers of Testtown Enniscorthy decided to host their pop-up ‘Craft Street’ in the lead-up to Christmas to make the most of pre-Christmas gift buying. Enniscorthy Craft Street was built around a longer-term training programme. This focused on people who were out of work offering them the chance to be trained in a specific craft alongside master crafts people as well as in business skills.

“The organisers of Testtown Enniscorthy decided to host their pop-up ‘Craft Street’ in the lead-up to Christmas to make the most of pre- Christmas gift buying.”

Artisan and craft businesses who participated included blacksmiths, stonemasons, woodturners, an interactive craft making shop and homemade card and gift makers. The participants who went through the training were given the opportunity to sell their homemade items in the pop-up premises. The winner of TestTown Enniscorthy was Olive Winters with her small antiques business – The Winter Sparrow Vintage Collection.

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Words of Advice

  • Have plenty of time to be on hand during trading as working with lots of stakeholders and businesses is very time consuming. It is key to manage the expectations of the participants e.g. they will not all make lots of money during their first day of trade.

    TestTown 2015 Host

  • Life changing/ life affirming experience –finalists really went on a life journey’

    TestTown 2013 Host

  • We underestimated a lot or things which needed to be considered for the units and ended up doing the cleaning etc. for a couple on our own. All a good learning curve though for future initiatives and we’d make sure we added more lead in time to them.

    TestTown 2014 Host

Highlights from the recent years

Five Ways To Supercharge Your TestTown

We believe there are five things which would Supercharge your TestTown:

  1. Every town should create a clear, supported pathway into trading and opening up a shop  for new town centre entrepreneurs.
  2. Every town should have a permanent pop-up facility in a viable trading space which offers flexible lease arrangements up to a year for new town centre entrepreneurs to learn.
  3. Every town should work, within their means, to reduce financial barriers in reduced rates and rents for new traders during their first year of business.
  4. Every town should carry out a regular (every five years) entrepreneur-led consultation which would feed into a business-led strategy for town centre development and business support.
  5. Every town should develop a hyperlocal cross-sector partnership to lead local innovation, ensuring that agencies, businesses, and residents are all powerful in leading local development.