About
Present Days opened in October 1977 as a small ‘two-room’ shop selling mainly cards & stationery.
Over the years we have expanded backwards and upwards – and now we are full!
The shop is housed in a Georgian fronted three-storey building that dates back to before the Great Fire of Warwick. It is old and wonky with nooks and crannies and odd little corners, beams and spiders (they don’t come out during the day!) and is loved by us, our staff and our many loyal customers (from far and wide).
Gill and David manage and buy for the shop. We both worked in the theatre before realising that working seven days a week was not much fun – we now know that there really isn’t much difference! Gill is responsible for all the buying, all the shop displays and the window displays. She is the dynamo. David spends his time paying the bills, deals with the endless ‘red-tape’ and is therefore mainly grumpy.
We travel many hundreds of miles a year, and to several countries, to find the unusual and different. Some things will be found in other shops and on other web sites but many others will not.
We always try to promote small companies and hand-made products when we can (many of them local) and we also try hard, not always totally successfully, to buy ethically from companies using sustainable or renewable materials and we always check, through our suppliers, the working conditions of the people making items purchased from abroad.
We introduced eco-friendly bags and a ‘loyalty card’ long before the multiples. In fact it is a little known fact that independent shops often lead the way for others to follow.
We have great staff, have a wealth of products and offer unfailing customer service.
We are a ‘hands-on’ experience and hope you will be able to visit us soon.
