Katie Cardew's Stamford store closes today

Thursday, 13 February 2025 10:50

One of the most eye-catching local independent shops on St Mary Street in Stamford closes its doors for the final time this afternoon.

It was the first shop Katie Cardew opened, and was funded after the business had a boom in online orders during lockdown. Katie's Oakham shop and headquarters of her illustration business will shut its doors on Mill Street in a couple of weeks time, as Katie concentrates on her interior design business after 11 years as an illustrator. Katie says it's been a big part of her identity, her life, and that of her family, and she'll miss it hugely.

"Opening the shops was amazing, lockdown, Covid was awful in many respects, but for the business it was a great success in terms of people buying online, and we used that money that we generated from lockdown to open the Stamford shop and then subsequently moved to our big Oakham offices and shop and then Lincoln, so that was really good. I mean Chelsea Flower Show was mad, we still talk about it, it was one show, but it was a huge one for us and it was mad and we met so many celebrities and we had so many customers, thousands and thousands of sales and it was just a mental 10 days. I think another big thing was doing this and having two children. I didn't take maternity leave, which I don't advocate for particularly, but that's what I did. And this business meant a lot to me back then. And I got back to work and I loved having the babies and being able to run a business and being busy. And yeah, my kids have grown up knowing this business inside out and that would be quite sad. And they know me as an illustrator."