By Scott Wright
AN Isle of Lewis-based whisky retailer who delayed plans to open his first store in April after coronavirus struck is reaping the rewards of diversifying his
business model.
Iain Faller, founder of The Island Spirit Whisky Shop, began delivering to customers across the Outer Hebrides and mainland Scotland and ramped up his online offer after normal retailing was constrained by the lockdown.
Mr Faller said he had the confidence to adapt having attended a range of courses through Business Gateway over the last two years. He has supplemented his move into online sales by hosting a series of virtual tasting sessions in collaboration with Larkfire, the supplier of “wild Scottish water” for whisky from Lewis.
Mr Faller said: “I had always dreamt of turning my hobby of collecting whiskies into a business, and after attending twenty Business Gateway workshops, I finally took the plunge. While I was not anticipating the current situation, the skills I gained from attending Business Gateway workshops equipped me with the confidence to diversify and utilise social media to advertise and market our business, without having the presence of our high street shop. I have been overwhelmed with the support and encouragement I have received from the local community and other local businesses.”
Mr Faller has accessed a variety of start-up services from Business Gateway which are credited with keeping the business stable during the pandemic, including a grant from the Outer Hebrides Young Entrepreneurs Start Up Scheme (Plus), funded by Highlands and Islands Enterprise and delivered by Business Gateway Outer Hebrides. He said: “The business support grant we applied for has helped keep the business on track with our original plan and prevented us from spending money allocated for stock purposes.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here