Having lived in the town all my life, you find yourself attached to what you know and have grown up with. Worksop is my hometown and I love it.
Growing up, Saturday shopping trips to the town centre happened each week with my parents and when I became old enough you would venture to the town centre with your friends. That visit to Woolworths to buy a pop idol poster and pick a mix, buying a vinyl record of a song in the top forty charts or just visiting Cypriana café for that ‘chip butty’ What a town we had.
Over the years, Worksop like many towns has suffered. Recessions, rising rents and more recently COVID! Bartrop and Dilks have been in the town now since 2008. When I leased the building back in 2007 our office on Bridge Street was literally the only available office on the high street. Ninety-nine percent were occupied, and the town was thriving with a mix of good independent shops and the national brands.
Entering the town now 1 in 3 shops are empty, footfall is decreasing, and shops continue to close. Despite all this though – I still ‘Love Worksop’
We have some great businesses and business owners. Genuine, local people doing their best to earn a living. This got my staff thinking, how can we help each other? Was there more Bartrop and Dilks could do?
After many brainstorming sessions we came up with the idea to introduce a ‘I Love Worksop – Reward Card’ We wanted people to shop more local and start to love the town again.
We contacted many local businesses and told them how we wanted to support the town to hopefully see it grow again but needed them on board. We are pleased to announce that we have now gone live with a Reward Card. Many businesses have signed up and have discounts for customers with new business enquires coming in all the time.
We have offered all this free of charge to all businesses and will continue to do so. We promote them on our website and social media, we encourage our clients to shop local. This alone won’t get the town back where it once was, but it can help. Nothing would please me more to walk through the town again and for it to feel like it was when I was a child.
The ‘I Love Worksop Reward Card’ can be collected from our office and used at participating businesses which are listed on our website or where you see the sticker in any local business.
Let’s get supporting local. Shop and buy in Worksop. It’s our home.
