Meg Gage Williams finds it hard to believe that the premises where she has opened her third antique poster shop was once a simple hardware store. She believes it is an iconic location, just behind the Santa Caterina market and very close to the Picasso and Moco museums. "It's a neighborhood that interests me a lot," explains the British businesswoman, who lived in the Catalan city many years ago and whose memory has brought her back. "Barcelona is at the center of the world," she says, sitting on one of the vintage sofas she has placed to give a retro feel, like the posters hanging in the establishment where tourists keep coming in.
Stick No Bills, as it is called, is the third store Gage Williams has opened, after those she has in other tourist destinations such as Mallorca and Sri Lanka. She has resided in all three places, and it was in the Asian country where she started, together with her husband, Philip James Baber, to collect posters and opened their first physical store, in addition to an online shop. They collected posters featuring James Bond, Hollywood, or Bollywood, but soon saw that customers preferred those illustrating the cities and most famous places of Sri Lanka in the late 19th century.
As they were asked to expand, they landed in Mallorca, where they moved after living in Sri Lanka. There, Carlos Andreu Cantarell joined as an investment partner, a Barcelona businessman who has helped them find their place in the city. They do not want to detail the investment involved in setting up this store in Ciutat Vella. Five workers have been hired.
With 650 posters already printed in Barcelona, they have 2,000 more in the warehouse. They highlight the recovery they have made of posters from the luxury fashion store Santa Eulalia, conceived in the 1920s and 30s of the last century, and signed by artists such as José-Luis Rey Vila. Prices range from 4 euros for postcards to 29 and 39 euros for posters, when they are not limited editions, and between 45 euros and 795 euros, when they are limited editions. The largest poster hanging in the store, with the letters of Barcelona made of gold, amounts to 16,000 euros. "They are not the typical souvenir," remarks Gage Williams, who believes that stores like hers, designed primarily for the visitors who abound in an increasingly less Barcelonian neighborhood, contribute to projecting the city.