The running store balancing community and commerce
Having opened a new running store in Edinburgh's Easter Road, can Aidan Thomson successfully realize his vision of a community-led business?
Much is made of the explosion of new running clubs, and the slick new breed of running apparel that they’re wearing, but what about the places that stock that gear? Yeah, there’s also a steady drip of new community-oriented running stores. It’s all linked.
Here, I speak to Aidan Thomson about his hopes and dreams for Interval — the boxfresh running store he opened in Edinburgh not even five weeks before our conversation.
A neat little corner property on Edinburgh’s Easter Road, just a stone’s throw from the stadium of one of Scottish football’s most storied clubs, Hibernian, Interval strikes a bright white pose at first glance. The interior is just as well lit. With a single, heavily-loaded rack of clothes to the right, a wall of neatly arranged shoes to the left, and a center display – a table of well-curated accessories. It’s a good-looking running shop, but as runners, we’re always interested in The Why, aren’t we?
Concepts of a Plan
The first conversations about Interval’s existence came about in London, where Aidan had been working for the five years before he returned home to Edinburgh. Working for a running events company during the pandemic, he naturally got into trail and then road running.
Through his work, and his newfound interest in the sport, Aidan had conversations with brands like Tracksmith and Soar, and the topic of Scotland naturally arose. It came up that “there wasn't really a place [in Scotland] that you could come and feel those products and understand it, understand the price range, and try it on.”
“The small brands are as important as the small shops are insofar as they need to be there and it'll be hard for them against the big boys. You need to exist for them to exist.”
“When I got back to Scotland, the more I looked into it, the more it felt like there was a gap in running retail for being a bit more aspirational in both the store, and how you speak to customers.”
Aidan talks about getting to know the people who walk into Interval, and understanding the things they like rather than the transactional nature of “just giving them three shoes” to try on. That idea of community was embedded in his psyche from an early age. His mother owned and operated a cafe in Edinburgh.
“I've previously worked in the more digital side of things, and I still look back on the cafe and think about the way that bricks and mortar is the only way that you can really interact with the community. You need to be there when people come in and have a chat.”
Can community be a commodity?
Unlike a cafe, what’s for sale in a running store are bigger ticket items. It’s not a casual cup of tea and slice of cake – it’s a $100 investment – so can building a community around a store reap sufficient profits? It’s a question that can only be answered in time, but Aidan is resolute in the idea of Interval being a place for people to congregate without overt pressure to purchase.
“I think the biggest thing is that idea that you can come in and chat for an hour about stuff to do in Edinburgh and don’t buy anything. I say that with an understanding of the business side, of course – we're not doing that purely out of the good of our hearts. We're not an information center, but we hope that will translate into an actually viable model.”
One of the blueprints that Aidan is following is that of Oakland’s Renegade Running. He spoke to Renegade founder Victor Diaz at length during the planning of Interval. He talks now of eventually building a home away from home for like-minded runners.
“For me, the dream is for people who are part of the Renegade community to feel similarly at home here as they do over there.”
On the business side of it, Aidan acknowledges the running boom that we’re a part of right now, and hopes that he can add something positive with Interval while building a successful business at the same time.
“Anything that becomes really popular – in the way that running has – attracts brands, attracts commercialization. I think it's just making sure that things are happening for the right reasons. This is a business first and foremost, so the numbers all need to add up, but I think you still can do everything there for the right reasons.”
One of the ways he’s doing that is to involve the immediate community in a custom-designed cotton Tracksmith tee. Starting with the shirt being Hibernian dark green, it also boasts art from a local artist, Jack Fletcher, and is hand-printed by a local screenprinter at a studio half a mile away.
When I suggest that it’s ok to wax lyrical about his new neighbors who have welcomed Interval with free pizzas, coffee, and more, with a smile in his eye, Aidan tells me that he’s Scottish — they don’t do overly romantic. Evidence of Robert Burns disagrees, but regardless, it’s a shirt that’s so deeply rooted in place. It’s a beautiful labor of love that celebrates Easter Road, Edinburgh.
The value proposition
Aidan quickly realized that Interval needed to “do something different to what's already been nailed by the amazing groups up here. Obviously ‘community’ gets thrown around a lot. Hopefully in time this place becomes a hub, a facilitator to the communities that have already been built.”
Edinburgh is a wonderful city for running. While the city is a gateway to more rural running destinations, this is an inner city running shop with picturesque inner city trails nearby – up, down, and around Arthur’s Seat – and spacious riverside road running along the Promenade. Accordingly, there is a steady stream of new running crews emerging alongside the established run clubs, and old school athletic clubs (ACs). Fitting into that landscape has also required purpose.
“There's already heaps of amazing running crews in Edinburgh. I'm just a facilitator.”
While the club scene may be thriving, Aidan’s experience of London – a city with 20 times the population of Edinburgh – means that he’s got high hopes for what he can build in terms of meaningful events. One such offering is a weekly track night up at Meadowbank. Built for the 1970 Commonwealth Games, it was the home of Edinburgh Athletic Club until 2017, helping to produce talent of the likes of Josh Kerr, Laura Muir, and Jake Wightman along the way.
“Now, [without Edinburgh AC], it’s basically empty all the time, and it's expensive. It's £6.75 ($9) if you're going pay-as-you-go, so I thought ‘How can we make this cheaper?’ Let's rent it for an hour, and charge people £3 a session. Sometimes you make your money back, sometimes you lose a bit. It evens itself out.
“It brings together people from loads of different run clubs because it's something different for folk. ACs are not always easy things to go along to, but you want to do those track sessions to see where your running can go, and then maybe jump up to an AC, if that's what you want.”
So that’s Interval and Aidan Thomson. A new running shop in Edinburgh created by a man who is sure that adding rather than subtracting is the way forward.
“Running’s been good to me. Running’s having a moment. There’s good bits and bad bits to that. We all know that the good parts of running come from its accessibility, and that can be lost really quickly, and that's what I'm talking about when I talk about the negatives. It’s trying to retain that.”
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- Raz
I spend a lot of time thinking about a running store / coffee shop combo with a trail nearby so all runners can meet up and head out for a run. A LOT of time.
Reminds me of a few over here in the states (Heartbreak, Renegade) as well as Knees Up Space in UK