The nomadic times of a popular Bold Street shop look set to come to an end with a permanent home.
The Hippy Hole has had a roller coaster ride of highs and lows since opening in 2012, but the shop’s next chapter looks bright and just in time for Christmas.
The dream for owner Jennifer Tripp, whose jewellery and crystal store started in a basement at Renshaw Street’s Grand Central, was always to have her own shop. After a nomadic nine years, her dream is finally going to be realised with a new, permanent home on Bold Street.
She said: “I got tired of working for other people, so I just decided to give it a go and open a shop. I started in a basement and I was there for a year. There were many days where I took £0.”
“We were then given the big frontage of Grand Central, the second biggest shop in there. But for the first four years I didn’t even take a wage for myself. I paid the staff and lived on benefits. Our great manager Chloe managed to keep the shop going through tough times, but then we were evicted from our shop to make way for Smoky Mo’s.”
However, the fair-trade store was given a new lease of life by Bold Street’s popular clothes store Soho’s, where Tripp and her colleagues have been sub-letting for the last three years along with three other shops and a tattoo and piercing studio.
“I’ll always be thankful to Soho’s for giving us a home when we lost our last one. But the environment was too small. We make our own tie dye, and for that we need a studio. Since we lost our unit in Grand Central, I’ve had to have that in the back of my flat. I’ve actually been living in my stock room and my tie dye studio.”
Yet when Nolita Cantina, a Bold Street restaurant of seven years, permanently closed during the Covid-19 lockdown, Tripp snapped up the opportunity to finally achieve her goal and bought a place that would feel like her own.
She said: “We’re looking forward to opening big time. Now I’ve got my own space, I can bring my work back-to-work. I can put my name above the door again.
“I hope this new shop will be our home forever and we can continue to be a part of the independent business community in Liverpool.”
The Hippy Hole plans to open at 81 Bold Street as soon as the second lockdown ends.
To celebrate reopening, Tripp said: “We’re all going to dress up like frogs, because our logo is a little frog on a lily pad. We’re very excited.”