In their own words
Sixty years on the market, second generation
Richard Burns has sold footwear on Dewsbury Market all his working life, as his family did before him. We asked about sixty years, quality stock, and what still needs fixing.
Richard Burns Footwear · Dewsbury Market ·
Richard Burns Footwear · Dewsbury Market · 1 min 54. The conversation is transcribed in full below.
Boxes to the ceiling, shoes laid out on their lids, a red barrow at one end. Sixty years of a family business fits into a pitch a few metres wide.
He talked to us with one eye on the stall, which is the only way anyone on a market ever talks to anyone.
“We've been on Dewsbury Market celebrating sixty years this year.”
Tell us about the business
It's Richard Burns Footwear. It's a family business. We've been on Dewsbury Market celebrating sixty years this year.
So we sell all types of footwear — slippers, sandals, shoes. It's all decent branded sort of gear. And like I said, we've been on here second generation now.
How is the new market trading?
Today there's a lot of people about. I think people are coming to see what it's like, what it's all about. But it seems very, very busy.
It might be better, seeing as we're more compact as a market rather than spread out on the old market. So hopefully we'll continue like it is.
And the weather today?
The weather's helped, and everything. We've got concerns when it's wet weather, because we've no canopies or anything out.
So that needs addressing — so we can at least carry on trading if it's raining, or anything like that.
What sort of stock do you carry?
We tend to sell better quality products. We have a lot of customers that send these products abroad, where the mothers of the second generation have come from.
We've got a lot of Asian customers who like to come and bring photographs of what their mothers have bought, and what they've bought previous years, and then they send it back over there. But they want a quality product, which we try and sell.
What is it like being in Dewsbury as a town?
Dewsbury — today, you wouldn't recognise it. But normally it has gone down, because unfortunately it's got a bad reputation: drug people, people stealing out of shops, this sort of thing, which still needs to be addressed.
But at the moment we've got a really good feel-good factor today. So hopefully we'll continue.
