Tucked away in the depths of Northern Quarter lies Jutah Studios. To the normal onlooker, you could be inclined to think it’s just a menswear store, but you’d be wrong.
Opened in April this year, owners Connie & Emile have taken a different approach to retail with three floors offering different things.
With a menswear boutique on the ground floor, pop up space on the middle floor, and a tattoo space located on the top floor, Jutah Studios is certainly a unique space.
“I don’t think there are many spaces trying to reach this genuine level of collaboration in Manchester in the way we are, whilst also kind of fusing it with artistic integrity.” Connie said.
Both Connie and Emile were based in London but felt that the city was stripping them of all their resources.
Their solution, or idea, to form this creative community came from their travels and specifically from the city of Berlin.
[pullquote]“I like it because its fresh, we are just young people, young artists, different work, different stuff, but artists,” – Bruce Tavrov [/pullquote]
“It’s just really exciting, they kind of merge restaurants with tattoos and alternative in the fact everyone there will shop independent rather than high street brands. So we wanted to come back and do that here,” Connie Said.
This collaborative vision that Connie and Emile have is shown with their decision to let the second floor play host to a ‘pop-up store’, that see’s different independent retailers set up their shop every week.
Young independent retailer Ladi Kazeem, who’s store is based on the online platform Depop, was taking full advantage of the second floor space.
“I was looking for spaces in like London, Leeds and this one was pretty decent, it’s in a really good area,” said Ladi.
He added, “It already has the fixtures so its pretty perfect for what I was looking for, I could come in, just put the rails up, stick the hanger on, it’s quick and easy.”
The ‘pop-up store’ is nothing new in terms of ideas, with Afflecks Palace, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, having paved with way in this city for many years.
Connie and Emile previously had a space there, and have recognised the potential for a pop-up store in Jutah Studios, and Ladi acknowledged this.
“In town the rates are obviously inflated, the rooms are pretty bare so you’ve got to bring your own rails down, that’s time consuming for you in itself. “
“This is obviously really clean, it’s set up for people like myself who can literally just throw something on the rails ready to go.”
Although this collaboration with Ladi and his pop-up may be temporary, there are permanent collaborators at Jutah with tattoo shop Lightnink Studio.
Lightnink is made up of Bruce (Lightnink) Tavrov and Simona Miteva, who specifically chose this space to enable them to work with other creatives.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BbwZ0Y1D75J/?hl=en&taken-by=lightenink
Bruce said, “Here, we’re a motivated young nation and there’s a lot of ideas, Emile is the guy trying to get the young society alive and you can feel the wave here.”
He added, “We had a few offers to work for different shops, to rent something else but we was in love with that idea. “
There is no doubt that Jutah Studios is defintley experimenting in the way they do retail and who knows, maybe this is the right direction for retail in Manchester.
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