David and Kellie Riley
A White Room, Colne
David and Kellie, Rough Lee; David and Kellie in their Colne showroom.
Over in Europe every little town has a shop like this one, it’s just the norm.
Colne born and bred, Kellie and David Riley have been running A White Room for five years. Inside their shop it’s all designer products, clean lines and a modern outlook; five minutes away, beautiful countryside is yours for the taking. The best of both worlds, some may say.
Over in Europe every little town has a shop like this one, it’s just the norm. Over here, people think you need to go to the big cities to get designer furniture but it’s not true. We’re trying to bring a few of those European ideas over here.
We made a conscious effort to stay around here. We have a lot of people who come up and see the old buildings and the cobbles, everything you’d expect in a Lancashire mill town, but then they see the shop and it’s modern, maybe they don’t expect it. We like to think we’ve got contemporary products with traditional values. You can go to the big cities but here it’s a bit more relaxed. You can find shops that are that little bit different, shops you won’t find on every high street. In Colne itself you can get designer clothes and lovely gifts, there are lots of little shops and we all help each other out, it’s real community here. After all, we’re like-minded people with the same interests at heart.
In April, we’re off to Milan for the International Furniture Fair. It’s brilliant over there, it’s a prestigious event with thousands of pounds spent on the latest designs but not once have we come back and frowned upon what we’ve got here. The things you see over in Milan are the things that we have in the shop. We’re bringing that bit of European and Italian culture to Colne and making it easy for people to have a little bit of that in their own homes. We’re creating a ‘Milancashire’!
We’re not just concerned with foreign designers though. We like to support local designers and artists. There are a couple of local guys from Barrowford and Burnley and people bring in their artwork and we put it on the walls for them. It’s great to think we’re helping by giving them somewhere to show their work.
We’re both from round here originally. We were in the same class at school actually… but we didn’t get together until years later! This is home for us both and I don’t see us leaving anytime in the future. Our business is here, the kids are in school, we have no reason to leave. Everything we want is here and it can only get better with the aspirations that are out there – they just give people more excuses to come to the area. It’s not just about telling people who don’t live here how great it is though, it needs pointing it out to the people who do live here. Sometimes you don’t see what you’ve got when you see it all the time.
We like getting out and about, whenever we can, which is quite a lot really. We’re not trekking up mountains or anything like that but every Sunday morning I [David] go out on my bike and then we usually all go walking in the afternoon. Last week I did 15 miles on the bike and then we walked some of the same route later that afternoon. It sounds a bit weird because there are loads of places to go but it was so lovely. When we go cycling, we tend to do is start out on one of the trails then make our own way, we start thinking, what’s up here and what’s down there and we just end up exploring.
You do just stumble on some really nice places and some lovely views. Every day when I’m driving my daughter to school in Rough Lee I see this gorgeous view. It is pretty much my favourite time of the day. I never tire of it; it’s just stunning. The whole view just opens up in front of you.
It’s about changing perceptions isn’t it? We know how great this place is; it’s everyone else that needs to catch on.
A White Room
Colne
www.awhiteroom.com
