Douglas Brothers – Shinshiro Koi

Douglas Brothers of Sunniside, Gateshead were established in 1905 and in 1979 became the first specialist Koi centre in the North East. Farmers of the land and then farmers of the water. The business is now split 3 ways,  these being a Farm Shop with retail fruit and vegetables, a Nursery with plants, compost, fertilizers etc. and a Fish and Aquatics department.  More recently the fish side of the business run by Stan, Richard and Rachel, a friendlier bunch you could not hope to meet, has diversified further into tropicals and even rumoured going forward for marines. Stan with or without another family member goes out to Japan on a regular basis to hand pick all of the koi that come back the UK for sale at the centre.

I first met Stan a long time ago when he and his father and his son came and created a pond for me. Stan is slowly but surely growing the online side of his business and getting into all things Google, web, search etc. The latest part of this was the provision of an online tour. They looked at this some months ago and decided to wait until the new tropical fish house was completed along with some layout changes and once this was complete – the date was set. Stan  looked at the tour as a way of letting local people know just what they have at the site as well letting his mail order clients see that there was a real and substantial business behind the website and advertising. In the days when people can operate online from a bedroom and a garage – it is nice to see you are dealing with a substantial bricks and mortar business. The shoot went ahead just around the time they were closing and I worked around the customers that were there. A couple of hours after close time and job done. A cup of tea from Stan and a natter about the Koi… A good day.