Britain's oldest manufacturing firm rings in changes with online launch

Whitechapel Bell Foundry launches first online store, selling handbells and doorbells direct via Swedish service Tictail

It has cast and sold bells to Britain and beyond since 1570, but now the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, Britain's oldest manufacturing company, is ringing in the changes by launching its first online store, selling handbells and doorbells direct to the consumer.

The east London foundry has set up a store using the Swedish service Tictail, a startup that began 18 months ago in Stockholm and already runs 30,000 stores worldwide, with the UK the site's fastest-growing market. The company, which Wired magazine called "Tumblr for e-commerce", lets business owners set up online shops free of charge.

Kathryn Hughes, a director of the family-run foundry, says she and her husband had discussed setting up an online store many times over the years but had no idea how to go about it. "Tictail approached us and said they were a new, free online shop, and I thought 'nothing to lose really'," she said. "The sort of things we're selling start with our smallest bell, which can be used for ringing for tea, that sort of thing. Then there's our table bell, our bracket bells – the sort used in school playgrounds – and doorbells. People are into doorbells at the moment, real ones, not buzzy ones."

Tictail operates on a "freemium" model, not taking a cut on sales, but selling functionality such as voucher codes, mailing lists and analytical tools.

"Our mission as a company is to democratise selling online," says the company's co-founder, Carl Waldekranz. "To make it available for people who don't care about e-commerce but just want to sell the best thing they can.

"There's so many things about the UK market that's right for Tictail, and one of them is that Napoleon was right: it's a nation of shopkeepers, and it fits us really well."

When the foundry was established in Whitechapel in 1570, Elizabeth I was on the throne. In 1752, it cast the Liberty Bell, an icon of American independence, and in 1856 it cast Big Ben, although the bell cracked while being tested and had to be recast in 1858. Specialist sales, largely church bells and musical handbells make up the majority of its turnover, but Hughes hopes that will change once the store goes live.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk
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