![Street view of "Conquer Trading Post" and "Cook House Gallery".](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-one.jpg)
An American-inspired Keswick gift shop is taking the souvenir scene by storm with its unique aesthetic.
Conquer Trading Post, based in Keswick, first started life as an online business selling sew-on hiking badges before it exploded in popularity and became big enough to expand into a physical gift shop.
Owned by Caroline Fisher, 46, of Lamplugh, her idea for the shop first came in 2018 when, inspired by the vanlife movement, she bought a campervan with her husband.
She said: “When I first got the idea, me and my husband Martyn had bought a campervan and prior to this I’d had absolutely no interest in growing a business.
“At the time the whole Instagram camper-vanning thing was kicking off, and on there it’s all about the aesthetic. While my husband was more concerned with things like needing a spare tyre, I said no, we’re going to need stickers and fairy lights and bunting!
“I thought if it doesn’t look like the vans on Instagram, what’s the point? I wanted that experience and at that point it hit me that I couldn’t think of anywhere to buy a bumper sticker for a van locally.
“There was nothing out there to create that really cool, American adventure Wes Anderson aesthetic that I was seeing everywhere and it got me thinking, why?
“We have the most amazing national park in the UK, and I couldn’t even find a sticker or a patch that says Keswick or Catbells on it.
“I thought god, something is seriously missing in the market here.”
![Colourful fabric patches in wooden display compartments](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-four.jpg)
While Caroline had no previous experience in owning a business – she was inspired, and spent a whole night dreaming up and drafting designs for Lake District inspired sew-on-badges.
With her designs in hand, she then started thinking of a way to start selling them.
She said: “I designed 12 hiking patches to start with and had them made by a manufacturer and the samples arrived about three or four days before Keswick Mountain Festival.
“I thought fantastic, this is where I need to be. This is my people, we’re going to sell them here and people are going to love them.
“So I contacted the organisers and they said there was absolutely no space, so I sent them some pictures of what we were doing and they said oh, you’ve got to be there, we’ll get you a table.”
Caroline then took her patches to a marquee at the festival, where she planned to sell them – but it didn’t go as planned.
She said: “I’m not joking, it absolutely bombed. Nobody bought anything, but I still really believed it was a good idea.
“So after the Mountain Festival, I developed a fake it until you make it attitude, and I went to every retailer on the street, showed them our product and said we had sold out in two days at the festival, when we hadn’t even made it to day three.
“All the retailers we visited said they wanted some and within three weeks we had around 30 retailers on board.
![Camping gear and adventure-themed stickers and patches display.](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-seven.jpg)
“We sold out I didn’t have a patch left and I had all those retailers saying well we want more and as I was completely brand new I didn’t have any more!
“We had all these retailers saying they wanted hundreds of each and I’m thinking, I don’t even know where I’m going to get the money to fund this amount of patches we had all these pre-orders coming in for literally thousands of badges
“But we did it and it was a great problem to have, but it was also stressful, as we were having to quickly buy this stock and manage these new retailers all very quickly.”
Once news of the badges spread, even more retailers started to get in touch with Caroline.
She said: “Because we were in these retail places that other retailers watch, we went from 30 retailers to 60 retailers in the space of about six weeks and it just snowballed.
“I remember thinking oh my gosh, I’ve actually made a business. It went from being ‘oh this could bring in a few extra beer tokens’ to we need an accountant and quickly.”
As the badges continued to grow in popularity, Caroline started making stickers.
She then spent the next two years selling both wholesale and online, heavily using social media and the help of photographer Harry Baker to promote her products in an aesthetically pleasing way.
It was then that the idea to create a small gift shop was born.
![Cosy gift shop with various merchandise and dog toys.](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-ten.jpg)
She said: “I always thought about if I would want a shop, but I thought that it would be really expensive to run.
“Because we’re such a tiny business and we started with just patches and stickers that I’d designed myself, that’s all we really ever intended to be.
“But I was looking in an estate agents window and I saw a unit pop up shop for rent in Cockermouth. The rates were really cheap and based on what we were doing online we could have covered it really easily.
“So I ended up wondering if there was anything available in Keswick, because I felt for our brand Keswick was the place to be and there were two units available.
“They were in Packhorse Court in the town and the one we chose was right around the corner, so it wasn’t the greatest location as it wasn’t directly in the public eye but we went with it anyway.”
Despite the tucked away location, the shop thrived.
Caroline said: “We absolutely smashed it, it was amazing and I think because we’d already been going for a couple of years and our Instagram following was really good that that really helped us.
“People who were following us were coming to look for us and people were posting about us and the shop on Instagram.
“People were saying we were like a hidden gem, and everyone loves a hidden gem, so it actually really worked and almost became our personality.
“But at the end of the day at market days I would go out onto the Main Street and I would see just thousands of people and I would think to myself, not a single one of you knows where we are.
“While being a hidden gem sounds cool, for a small business it’s actually not that great. You want to be picking up every foot that passes through Keswick and we just couldn’t do that where we were.”
Towards the end of 2021, Caroline said she felt the shop was ready to move on to a bigger space after the business stayed strong during the pandemic due to the boom of staycations.
![Raven Crag embroidered patch on backpack with pine cones.](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-nine.jpg)
She then set her sights on the former site of Save the Children on Lake Road in Keswick.
Caroline said: “It had our name all over it. It was exactly our vibe because it was old school and had such a lovely frontage compared to some of the newer units on Main Street.
“I’d get a bag of chips on an evening and walk down and stand in that doorway and just look through the window and think the till would be there, and id have this and that there.
“It was a dream, just an absolute dream.”
Caroline eventually got in touch with the owners of the shop to see if she could rent the space
She added: “The agent for the owners looked at our little business and just said no, they’re in a tiny unit and they’re too small. The rent is huge, they can’t afford it.
“The unit actually went up for sale on the market and we did get a viewing, but we were then were told it had been given to a chain.
“I was absolutely shattered and devastated. But out of the blue the owners came into shop and said they were champions of small business and that their dad had owned independent businesses in the town and that they weren’t happy with the agents decision.
“They said do you still want it and I said I absolutely did.
“Apparently agents in the town are working with a list of chains they want to get into Keswick and I do think that is why we’re seeing the independents decline.”
With the bigger shop secured – Caroline then had to learn how to hire and look after staff and learn to mange the higher footfall.
But creating a carefully curated and well-decorated shop was first on the agenda.
![Cosy shop with various products and colourful shelves.](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-three.jpg)
She said: “We wanted the shop to be like you were walking onto the set of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom and that is what hits people straight away.
“I drew on my experience visiting national parks in America with my family and in America, they know how to celebrate a national park.
“When people come through the threshold of the shop they gasp, its like nobody has ever seen anything like it before.
“But we’ve got such a cool national park and the type of people who come and visit here now has changed really dramatic.
“It is really changing from that older clientele to a younger one and people are coming to do things like extreme sports more often.
“But across the board we’ve been slinging the same old map on a tea towel and nothing has been quite that American-level of cool in the Lake District in terms of shopping experience.
“So we wanted to be the shop where people pick something up and say wow, this is actually cool.”
While the shop takes a lot of its inspiration from American national park merchandise, Caroline has made the aesthetic her own.
She said: “It’s funny because everything in that shop is related to the Lake District.
“Even the canoe hanging from our ceiling was built locally. So you’ve got that Lake District canoe that when flipped upside down has that American outdoors aesthetic.
“We do get a lot of people who come in and have been to national parks across the world and say oh my god this is amazing, its like I’m returning to Yosemite.
“We wanted to show that we have a really cool national park here too.”
![Plaid reindeer head between colourful woven blankets on wooden racks.](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-five.jpg)
Caroline said that even down to the finest details, the shop is designed to be more than just a typical retail experience.
She added: “We choose our music really carefully. People who come in are always tapping their feet or saying I haven’t heard this in forever or singing along.
“People even comment on TikTok that the music is really good in here. But we think so hard about these tiny details.
“We even had a fragrance made for the shop and it gets sprayed around every day and we have it as a candle. So people can actually go away with the memory and we sell hundreds of them.
“Because we moved from such a big unit we had to pack the shop out as much as we could but there was still space left.
“So we made a cabin area with a rug and armchairs and we put out jigsaw puzzle out, because there’s always a dad that wants to rest his legs.
“People actually do sit down and finish it and take Instagram pictures of it and we have offered people coffee in the past while they’ve been sat there, but I think the marketing we get from those talking points is unreal.
“It’s not just a retail space, people get their phones out for pictures all the time, it’s a whole experience.”
Caroline also has a unique business model where she chooses to stock products from overseas that are difficult to get in the UK.
She added: “I design about half of what we have in the store, so that’s our stickers, badges, candles, apparel and postcards.
![Trading Post store entrance with camping gear displays](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-two.jpg)
“But we also import quite a few products from America as there isn’t many national park inspired brands around in the UK.
“Finding products that relate to being out on the water, up in the mountains or doing activities are difficult so looking to those thousands of businesses in America makes sense.
“The products we bring in are totally on brand for us and a lot of the products we sell you actually cant get anywhere else in the UK
“A lot of people will go all over the lakes to multiple gift shops and well be the only place that looks different. So having those products really sets us apart.
“We do get it, we’re in a culture now where people will look around online and try to find what’s in our store cheaper but that isn’t the case with our shop.
“If they try and import it from overseas themselves it ends up turning a £30 product into a £70 one and by the time they pay for customers and shipping costs, it ends up cheaper to buy from us.
“It is more expensive for us, but we make it work and it keeps us unique.”
While Caroline now offers a wide and unique product range that covers everything from skincare to cushions – stickers and badges have remained the shop’s top seller.
She added: “Despite the huge amount of effort we go through to import products, stickers and badges are still our bread and butter.
“It is great, because it’s how we started it all. We sell thousands every month but I think people love it because it’s that return to old school collecting.
![Cosy living room with hiking-themed decor and leather chairs.](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-eight.jpg)
“We’ve ended up becoming part of people’s stories with them. We actually had someone get in touch and ask for a Hallin Fell patch for their engagement.
“We didn’t have one, but I ended up collaborating with this complete stranger and he got the first one off the conveyer belt.”
Caroline said the shop also started getting fan mail from children who were sharing their stories of completing fells and sending pictures with their badges.
She added: “We got sticker sheets made so we could write back to them and we also had people say they’ve travelled six hours to see us.
“One couple came up to us and they were so excited and said they had planned their holiday here because they had seen us on TikTok, which is just incredible.”
![Colourful display of motivational banners and hangings in a shop.](https://businesscrack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conquer-six.jpg)
For Caroline, staying on top of the souvenir and gift shop market is key to their future planning.
She said: “I’ve always said a great idea is only great until you tell everyone about it and then everyone can use it for themselves.
“I don’t think we will stay the only shop in the lakes that looks like we do, people in retail can come in ans see what we stock so from my point of view its about moving and changing to maintain that originality.
“It all just started with a badge business online and now it’s turned into this whole big thing, it has been really unexpected, but really lovely too.”
Conquer Trading Post now supplies around 100 retailers and operates both online and in its physical shop.
The team at Conquer are also currently renovating the back of the shop to create extra office and stockroom space.