Name: Venetia Strangwayes-Booth
Company: Venetia’s Yarn Shop
Based: Norfolk
Trade: Wool
Trading since: 2022
Stopped selling to the EU: Yes
Estimate of business lost: 1%
Government communication?: Nothing of use
First heard about GPSR: 11th December 2024
Have you been contacted by customers in the EU??: Yes
MP: Jerome Mayhew MP - Broadland and Fakenham (Conservative, Shadow Business and Trade Minister)
Venetia's story in her own words:
"I went to a big trade fair in Köln, in 2023. I went to see a company that sells very popular sock yarn, and I said to them, “I'd like to deal with you directly”. And this woman just said to me, “We do not deal with Britain anymore”. It's like, “Oh, OK. Fine”. And then I found a distributor, their one distributor.”
"I'm not selling into Northern Ireland and the EU, it's too much like hard work until I can work out what I need to do. I'd rather have the paperwork and people in place, because otherwise you're going to have cross customers on the other end of the line."
“People knit more in the EU than they do here. And they love English wool, I get foreign tourists. So for example, I've got a customer in the Netherlands, who is absolutely lovely. And she comes to Norfolk about every two or three years and buys wool and that's brilliant. In the past I have sent wool to her as well. And now I can't.”
"And it's only now that people are beginning to notice [the effect of Brexit on them]. And where I live, this part of the world was seriously affected by Brexit. And I spent a lot of my time moaning about it. And people are terribly surprised, “Oh, it's impacting business?” Yes it is, you know.”
“I just think it's very easy for the government to not pay attention to the really tiny businesses. You know, Tesco's is fine. People who are employing, I don't know, 50 to 100 people probably belong to Chambers of Commerce and things like that… But you know, my margins are tiny and I'm not going to faff around. So that's the problem. I don't have lawyers to go to”.