The Wagon that Launched a Thousand Colours
- Mar 7
- 5 min read
Two years ago, I was sitting in our house wondering what to do next in my working life.
A year earlier we'd moved back to Suffolk, from Herefordshire where we'd lived for 20 years. This was because my mother, who still lived in Woodbridge there (where I grew up), was deteriorating fast with old age and illness and I was struggling to drive across the country every weekend. So we decided I'd give up my pretty responsible job as a Director of a local business and we'd sell our house to move East. At first we rented in Woodbridge and I spent nearly every day with Mum, managing her care and doing the caring when that all went pear-shaped, which it frequently did. Eventually we found a house just outside Bungay and moved in at the end of 2022.
Sadly, Mum died a few weeks later. I then spent a year sorting out and selling her flat . When it finally sold a year later there I was, wondering about that next step.
At first I decided to get a local job in Bungay and did just that. I worked at the lovely greengrocer Giddens and Thompson and am so pleased that I did as it enabled me to meet so many people and shopkeepers from Bungay and beyond.
But I knew that what I really wanted to do was to start my own business and perhaps...have a shop given that this was in my bones having grown up working in Mum's shop in Woodbridge called Fuzzypeg.
However I really didn't want the responsibility and stress of running a shop full-time so...started to think about having some kind of pop-up shop that moved around East Anglia. I already knew that this would be to sell colourful, folky things and probably vintage toys as both had been my passion for years and our house was stuffed full of them!
So thinking about this idea I suddenly had a lightbulb moment...I know! I'll buy a gypsy-style wagon! Do it up, transform it into a shop and tow it to folk festivals and other events. The gypsy style was exactly right for the products I wanted to sell and I could immediately see just how it would look - colours galore, crochet cushions, Romanian rugs, pompoms, lace, ricrac and roses festooned everywhere, circus font and a trillion toys hanging from every hook and baton.
Sounds familiar? Read on...!
I started scouring the internet looking for wagons and quite quickly (too quickly!) found exactly what I was picturing. It was even painted in red, yellow and blue so had a wonderful circussy/fairground look to it. No need to go and look at it ...it's perfect I thought! The seller warned me that the canvas roof needed replacing due to a tear but that didn't seem too onerous especially as I was already envisaging taking the canvas off to reline the interior with a rose print fabric.
So I clicked the "Buy now" button. It was all too easy until there was the saga of finding somewhere to store it under cover and arrange the transport down from Newcastle to Suffolk. This was achieved with quite a bit of stress but finally it was safely installed in a lock up on a nearby farm.
My boatbuilder husband, Will, and another friend (who specialised in canvas festival structures) began to review what needed to be done to fulfil my pop-up idea. As they scratched their heads and tut-tutted (A LOT) I largely ignored them to create mood boards for the colour palette and upholstery.
I chose a vibrant mix of slightly off-primary red, blue, navy and yellow with hints of green using Little Greene paint colours as my inspiration - Firefly red, Blue Verditer, Royal Navy, Giallo yellow and Brilliant Green.
I really went to town with the rose print fabric! I found a scrap of the most gorgeous print but the colours were all wrong - too pink and the background too dark. So a friend who had worked in films and theatre suggested I have it digitally recoloured and recommended Hatley Print. Thank god for them, they were brilliant and transformed that scrap into the most beautiful coloured print in my colours, and printed it on suitable cotton canvas ready for the caravan ceiling.
Meanwhile Will and friend were busy taking the caravan apart. First the canvas roof, waterproof membrane and inner fabric lining. Which revealed that the hoops supporting the roof were mostly rotten. So off they came too. Inside the caravan the cupboards and dividing panels were in a right old state with bent screws sticking out and nothing lining up correctly. So out most of that came along with the outer bargeboards and other details that had been bodged with expanding foam. The wagon was beginning to look very sorry for itself.
It was now June 24 and I realised that I wasn't going to have a pop-up shop wagon to take to the festivals I had already booked that summer to sell the products that I had started to order. So I cancelled the festivals and began to work on my website thinking if all else fails I can sell everything on there until the wagon is ready.
The website was a lot of work but made possible by collaborating with the wonderful Abby Monroe - an artist but also a technical whizz who knew everything there is to know about building one. I showed her all my wagon ideas - the colours, fabrics, pompoms, circus/fairground fonts etc and we used all of it to design the website.
Products started to be delivered and I began work on adding them all to the website which took AGES! But eventually it was all loaded and it was ready to launch.
It was November 2024 and the wagon was still a wreck, put on ice while Will's other boat-building projects took priority.
The website launched on 16th November 2024, the second anniversary of my mother's death which seemed just the right thing to do. Because I called my business FuzzypegFolk after her shop in Woodbridge, the one I grew up in, called Fuzzypeg.
Then, a month after the website launch,. a friend alerted me to a shop for rent on the Market Place in Bungay. "Oh no" said I, "I'm not going to have a shop, I'm doing up a wagon to be a pop-up but...well...I might as well have a little look at it".
Look I did, and within 2 minutes realised that THIS was my dream even though it was greige and full of carpet samples!
I could see that, with a bit of work, it would be a heavenly place to showcase all my lovely folky things.
So I went for it! I spent 2 months decorating it and again, all my original ideas for the wagon inspired the design of the shop - the same Little Greene paints, the same beautiful rose print fabric edged with pompoms, crochet cushions, lace trims, ricrac borders and a trillion toys and decorations hanging all over the walls and from the ceiling.
Almost a year has passed since the FuzzypegFolk shop opened in April 25. And I've never once regretted making the decision to have a shop. I've realised a lifelong dream and couldn't be happier with the result.
And what of the wagon? Well, it languished in the farm building until this week when, at last it was 'sold, as a (BIG) project to someone who will hopefully give it a new lease of life. I'm sad to see it go but so happy that I impulsively bought it. It provided all the inspiration for the FuzzypegFolk website and then the shop which may not have happened if the wagon had not been such a wreck!
So it really was the journey in that wagon that led me to launch FuzzypegFolk. I wonder what the next chapter will be? Stay tuned!
