In good company: Stockton & Co

In this interview series, we give you a behind the scenes look at the people behind the businesses we love.

Stockton & Co is a local home and gifts shop that stocks a curated range of art and items from around the world and The St John Street store is a labour of love for founder Alice Bradbury, and her daughter Mia, who works in the store.

“Two years ago my mum, came to me and said ‘I’ve got this idea’ and she started telling me about this shop she’s going to open and the whole idea of it was that she wants it to be full of things that’d she’d have in her own home, so this shop is just a version of our house. That’s where it came from.”

Alice’s daughter, Mia, absolutely loves working at the business. Her enthusiasm for the local artists’ works, and the artisan household products the store sells, is infectious - even if the pieces didn’t speak for themselves.

“I love all the little Japanese pieces, and I bought my first blanket the other day as well - I’m in that every night all rugged up in it. And of course, all the art… being able to get up and go to work and look at this every day, it’s just inspiring. Having people walk in and they’re just so shocked by it, and I get to be around it all day, so I’m just like ‘wow’. It’s cool.”

Mia grew up in a household full of art, and artists.

“My mum has worked in arts all her life, and she’s always had all the artists we have [for sale in the shop] come over for dinner, I’ve grown up around them. I know them all personally. They’d do me little doodles when I was young. It’s a really comforting thing to know all the artists so that when people come in I can tell them about the art.”

Having recently graduated, Mia is relishing working in the shop, and though she has had a few jobs before this one, she says: “I absolutely love it - I feel like I know what I’m doing, that it’s kinda what I’m meant to do.”

Find Stockton & Co at 124 St John St