From the outside, Pencil Me In is a small shop in Elgin town centre selling a range of cards, stationery and gifts to locals. But behind the counter, unseen to customers, the business supplies a growing number of pencils to some of London’s top tourist attractions. From the Houses of Parliament to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the Tate gallery and the Turner Prize, they all buy pencils for their gift shops from the same Elgin business.
Last year the store made 51,600 personalised pencils at an average of nearly 1,000 a week. It is a total it has nearly matched already this year. Sarah Holmes opened Pencil Me In in Manchester 10 years ago.
She moved it to Elgin in 2016 when her husband secured a job in the whisky industry. Since then she’s established the store, created links with London tourist attractions and expanded with a second homeware shop two doors up. From corporate banking to Elgin stationery shop dream Sarah, who is originally from Edinburgh, first opened Pencil Me In in Manchester 10 years ago.
She said: “I was still in my corporate banking job at the time with the Bank of New York. We were the bank for other banks looking after billions of dollars. “There were great people there, but it was a horrible business-type setting.
“Having my own shop was a little girl’s dream of mine. I’d loved going to Judith Glue in Kirkwall while visiting family there since I was six or seven years old. “So I thought to myself this is what I need to try and do.
How d.