Good buys

It’s six months since they brought their own dash of London retro chic to East Dorset, with a little help from their friends, family… and David Niven. Faith Eckersall browses at the county’s newest interiors store.

THERE’S a secret to successful shopping at Quintessentials: if you like it, buy it, for tomorrow it may be gone... and yes, that does include the shopfittings.

“One Saturday morning during the summer, we’d just re-done our window display with an old garden table and chairs, when a lady came in and asked if she could buy the lot. So we sold it to her, watched it go, and then wondered what we were going to do with the window!” says Natalie Garside, who, together with business partner, Judith Vlaarkamp, runs the store, in villagey Lower Parkstone.

Quintessentials was born last year over a cup of coffee and a natter, when Natalie and Judith worked together at a Bournemouth language school.

After a round of redundancies, they decided to try and make their dream – of running a chic interiors store combining Judith’s talent for soft furnishings and gift-making, with Natalie’s eye for revamping country furniture – come true.

Through contacts they acquired premises on busy Commercial Road, and set about stamping their style on the shop and selecting the stock.

“We had to think of a name, and I originally wanted something French, like Maison. Then I heard about this woman whose shop was called after a combination of her grandmothers’ maiden names but, because Judith’s family is Dutch and has very long surnames, that wasn’t right, either!”

Inspiration finally struck while Natalie was watching TV one evening and a programme about David Niven, entitled ‘The Quintessential Englishman’, came on.

“Quintessential means ‘the essence of’ or ‘the purest form’ and I thought that just about sums us up, although, oddly, the word Quintessentials doesn’t appear in any dictionary.”

Quintessentials sells a delicious combination of restored, painted or scrubbed pine furniture, and accessories. They also sell hand-made mirrors, and soft furnishings, including noticeboards and peg bags in 1950s’ style polka-dot, floral, or gingham fabric, and covetable goodies, such as enamel trugs, Savon de Marseille, lavender bag hearts, and Broste china from Denmark.

Goods are wrapped in tissue and placed, French style, into little brown carrier bags with the store’s card clipped to the side. That attention to detail, plus its restful, airy interior and the ice-cream colours, all adds up to an irresistible mix for customers who, Natalie observes, seem to be mainly women, treating themselves. But they have to be quick, because everything is for sale.

“There’s nothing more annoying than going into a shop like this and then discovering that the one thing you really want is not for sale. So we decided that, if someone wanted to buy what appeared to be a fitting, we’d let them.”

A cabinet that Natalie cleaned, painted and repaired was sold after they decided to use it as a shopfitting, and a customer subsequently took a shine to it.

“People like unusual things. I had these old coatpegs, two or three of them, all different, and I just cleaned them up and made a row of hooks from them and painted it green. It was up on the wall for a day when a lady just came in and said she wanted it for her beach hut.” Another customer arrived later, hoping to buy the same item but they had to tell her it was gone.”

Judith’s speciality is the soft-furnishings – padded photoframes and noticeboards, cushions and the £9.50 peg-bags – their biggest seller; “One morning we sold seven!” which comprise around 70 per cent of the shop’s stock.

They have also roped in Natalie’s mum, who makes soft, heavy fabric doorstops in polkadots and stripes, tote bags, and the lavender hearts, which have become so popular with customers. And they have plans to commission their own fabric designs, too.

After opening on May 1, Natalie and Judith are already planning their first, Quintessentials Christmas. The early signs are that their customers can’t wait.

Quintessentials is at 121 Commercial Road, Lower Parkstone Tel 01202 747788

Dorset Society