‘I saw you on TikTok’: New Shrewsbury matcha and vintage bar has opened with a bang

The owner of a new business in Shrewsbury that combines matcha and vintage clothing has said the shop has been extremely popular since opening last month.

Maddie Ford, 27, from Wem, officially opened the doors of Left, the matcha and vintage clothing bar at 41 Wyle Cop, on October 31.

Thanks to Maddie’s social media presence, the shop has been immensely popular with not just locals, but even with people from further afield like Hereford and Birmingham.

For the last three years, the young entrepreneur has been selling pre-loved and vintage handbags online and at markets under the business name Left Handbags.

But after her friend, who was the previous occupant at 41 Wyle Cop, said to her that she was leaving the unit, Maddie saw the opportunity that the empty space presented her and decided to finally set up a permanent home for her business.

Whilst the matcha and café element of the operation was totally new ground to Maddie, the idea of launching the business only weeks after getting the keys - she got them in early October - was not a daunting prospect.

This is because the Wem woman had huge support from her family - her uncle, a carpenter, and her boyfriend's mum, a sign writing business owner - who helped her get the Wyle Cop unit in ship shape.

Talking about the shop’s popularity thanks to the success of her Instagram and TikTok presence, she said it was a conscious effort to try and make Left “a girly shop”.

She said: “I think there are really cool vintage shops in Shrewsbury, but they are either really high-end or menswear, and there was nothing particularly that was kind of an affordable price range for young women and girls. And that is really who I want to hit.”

She added: “One of my friends was like, ‘it will be like when we were 18 and we could go to Topshop and get an outfit for Saturday night - we do not have that anymore.’”

Her popular and aesthetic social media posts are helped by the fact that Maddie did a fashion journalism master’s degree, where she studied marketing and graphic design.

Maddie went on to say that she has had lots of trade from college students from the nearby English Bridge campus.

Talking about how business has been since opening, she said: “It has been really good. It was crazy last week.

“We had so many people saying, ‘oh, I saw you on Instagram’, or ‘I saw you on TikTok’”.

Maddie has a dream of opening up more Left premises in the future, potentially in Chester, as well as launching a pop-up matcha bar to hire for events.

Left is open 10.30am to 4.30pm, Tuesday to Saturday.